Delivery Times at Purple Dragon Restaurant1

The Purple Dragon Restaurant is a Chinese carryout/delivery restaurant. Most of Purple

Dragons deliveries are within a 10-mile radius, but they occasionally deliver further away.
Purple Dragon employs a number of delivery people, several of whom are relatively new
hires. The restaurant has recently been receiving customer complaints about excessively long
delivery times. They have therefore collected data on a random sample of deliveries by one
of the new delivery people during the peak dinner time. They have also collected a random
sample of data for a delivery person who has been with them for several years. The data can
be found in the PurpleDragon.xls file and the variables are as follows:

1.

Deliverer: the person who made the delivery (the delivery person who has been with the
restaurant for several years has been labelled 1 and the new person has been labelled 2)
PrepTime: time, in minutes, from when the order was placed until the delivery person
started driving it to the customer
TravelTime: time, in minutes, taken to drive from Purple Dragon to the customer
Distance: distance, in miles, from Purple Dragon to the customer

(a) To compare the efficiency of the delivery people, calculate the speed of delivery where
speed is measured as miles per hour (mph) during the trip from the restaurant to the
customer. (It is surely fairer to compare delivery speeds than travel time.)
(b) Produce descriptive statistics and a histogram for the delivery speeds for each delivery
person.
(c) Find a 95% confidence interval for the mean delivery speed of each delivery person.
(d) The company feels that 25 mph is a reasonable mean speed. Can you reject the
hypothesis that the new delivery person has this mean speed? What about the other guy?
(e) Test the hypothesis that the mean speeds are the same for the two delivery people.

2.

Purple Dragon would like to advertise that it can achieve a total delivery time of no more
than 30 minutes for all customers within a 10-mile radius. On all orders that take more
than 30 minutes, Purple Dragon will offer the customers a 10 voucher to be redeemed on
their next purchase.
(a) Assume for now that the two delivery people in the sample are representative of all
Purple Dragons delivery people. Find a 95% confidence interval for the proportion of
deliveries (within the 10-mile limit) that will be more than 30 minutes.
(b) Suppose that Purple Dragon makes 1000 deliveries within the 10-mile limit. Find a
95% confidence interval for the total amount of vouchers it will have to give out for
being late.

Based on the case Delivery Times at Snow Pea Restaurant in Albright, Winston and Zappe (2006).

3.

The voucher policy described in Question 2 is simple to state and administer. However,
it is somewhat unfair to customers who live close to Purple Dragon - they will never get
any certificates. A fairer, but more complex policy might involve analysing the data to
determine whether total delivery time can be explained in terms of distance between the
restaurant and the customer. Devise such an equation, and then note that most of the
predictions for total delivery time are within, say, 5 minutes of the actual delivery times.
Therefore, whenever Purple Dragon receives a phone order, it looks up the customers
address, finds the distance, calculates the predicted delivery time based on the equation,
adds 5 minutes and then guarantees this delivery time or else a 10 certificate. It does
this for all customers, even those beyond the 10-mile limit.
(a) Assume again that the delivery people in the sample are representative of all Purple
Dragons delivery people. Find a 95% confidence interval for the proportion of all
deliveries that will take longer than the guaranteed total delivery time.
(b) Suppose that Purple Dragon makes 1000 deliveries. Find a 95% confidence interval
for the total amount of certificates it will have to give out for being late.