Acura Integra Price

By Christopher Walker


Explanation of Topic
The Acura Integra is a luxury sports-orientated car made from 1985-2006 consisting of four
distinct generations. It is a reliable car which has made the top ten list in Car and Driver
magazine six times and was also named the best front-wheel-drive drivers car ever in 2006 by
Evo Magazine.

Hypothesis
As an owner of a 1992 Acura Integra I was curious what the average price of Integras are in
general. I estimated that for the middle two generations the average price would be less than
7,000 dollars.

Project Design
Since I am looking at the total average for two different generations of the same type of car I
used a form of cluster sampling. Using a random number generator, I selected fifteen samples
from both generations and compiled the results. The data was collected during the third week
of the February, and so prices may have depreciated or raised for one reason or another as of
now. So please, keep in mind that these results may differ from current pricing.

Data Collection
Data collected includes price and year of car. The data was collected from a three online auto
sales websites: autotrader.com, carforsale.com, and cargurus.com. Majority of the data came
from autotrader.com, however their listings of second generation Integras was insufficient for
my needs, so I accessed carforsale.com and cargurus.com in order to adequately complete the
data collection. Location of the car for sale was not taken into account in this study, although
they were all in the northwest region. As a result, depending on ones location of residence, the
cost of travel has the potential to add to the cost of getting a car.
Raw Data

=$7,361.43 s=$8,555.77
Frequency Distribution
The frequency distribution is included to illustrate that many of the cars are within the region
that includes $7,000. This means that it is definitely possible that the mean is less than $7,000.
At the same time, it may be seen that there a few cars that are priced really high that may bring
up the mean.
Class Frequency
1,695-8,546 23
8,547-15,398 4
15,398-22,251 1
22,252-29,103 0
29,104-35,955 2

Price Year Price Year Price Year
$1,695.00 1992 $2,994.00 1991 $5,900.00 1999
$1,895.00 1990 $2,995.00 1993 $5,988.00 2001
$1,995.00 1999 $3,600.00 1990 $7,826.00 1999
$2,000.00 1992 $3,980.00 1990 $9,950.00 2001
$2,100.00 1991 $3,995.00 1990 $11,000.00 2000
$2,499.00 2000 $3,999.00 1992 $12,000.00 1995
$2,500.00 1994 $4,950.00 1992 $14,000.00 1998
$2,650.00 1997 $4,990.00 1992 $16,999.00 2001
$2,850.00 1991 $5,650.00 2001 $35,000.00 1998
$2,993.00 1993 $5,900.00 1995 $35,950.00 1991


Confidence Interval
Here is the confidence interval. So far so good. The estimation that the mean cost of second
and third generation Integras combined is less than $7,000 is still a possibility. It does not fall
outside of the confidence interval, and is actually rather close to the sample mean.

Hypothesis Test
Since I am hypothesizing that the mean is less than $7,000 then the null hypothesis $7,000
must be taken up. Using =.05 it may be clearly seen below that although the confidence
interval graph didnt disprove the original hypothesis, we must now fail to reject the null
hypothesis because there is insufficient data to support the hypothesis.
0
10
20
30
1,695-8,546
8,547-15,398
15,398-22,251
22,252-29,103
29,104-35,955
23
4
1
0
2
F
r
e
q
u
e
n
c
y

Cost In Dollars
Frequency Distribution


Conclusion
By the end of the study it became clear that the original hypothesis that $7,000 was indeed
incorrect. And yet, all is not lost. It may still be seen, especially via the frequency distribution
chart, that there are a few expensive cars that really jack up the mean. At the same time, there
are a lot of cars that are available which cost under $7,000 despite the fact that the mean is
higher.