PROBLEM SET NUMBER 5 BA 511:

BUSINESS ANALYTICS

PLE collects a variety of data from special studies, many of which are related to the quality of its products. The
company collects data about functional test performance of its mowers after assembly; results from the past 30 days
are given in the worksheet Mower Test. In addition, many in process measurements are taken to ensure that
manufacturing processes remain in control and can produce according to design specifications. The worksheet Blade
Weight shows 350 measurements of blade weights taken from the manufacturing process that produces mower
blades during the most recent shift. Elizabeth Burke has asked you to study these data from an analytics perspective.
Drawing upon your experience, you have developed a number of questions.
1. For the mower test data, what distribution might be appropriate to model the failure of an individual
mower?
2. What fraction of mowers fails the functional performance test using all the mower test data?
3. What is the probability of having x failures in the next 100 mowers tested, for x from 0 to 20?
4. What is the average blade weight and how much variability is occurring in the measurements of blade
weights?
5. Assuming that the data are normal, what is the probability that blade weights from this process will exceed
5.20?
6. What is the probability that weights will be less than 4.80?
7. What is the actual percent of weights that exceed 5.20 or are less than 4.80 from the data in the worksheet?
8. Is the process that makes the blades stable over time? That is, are there any apparent changes in the
pattern of the blade weights?
9. Could any of the blade weights be considered outliers, which might indicate a problem with the
manufacturing process or materials?
10. Was the assumption that blade weights are normally distributed justified? What is the best-fitting
probability distribution for the data?

Summarize all your findings to these questions in a well written report.

Answer
1. To know what distribution might be used to model the failure of an individual mower, Bernoulli distribution can be
used to model whether an individual responds positively (x = 1), or negatively (x = 0).
2. 0.018 is the fraction of mowers failure using all the mower test data.
3. The probability of having x failures in the next 100 mowers tested, for x from 0 to 20 is 42.
4. The average blade weight is 4.99 and the variability in the measurements of blade weights is 0.0119.
5. The probability that blade weights from this process will exceed 5.20 is 0.0278.
6. The probability that weights will be less than 4.80 is .96.
7. The actual percent of weights that exceed 5.20 or are less than 4.80 from the data in the worksheet is 93%.
8. Yes because of its variance of 0.0119 which is so small and the lesser the variance the better. And as we can see there
is just a little difference on each of the weight of the blades.
9. Yes, there is one outlier in the charts, which is number 171 with weight of 5.87 and this might cause a problem
because it is now on the standard weight set by the manufacturing department.
10. Yes the assumption is normally distributed as we can see on the chart using a line chart.

Blade Weights
7.00

6.00

5.00

4.00

3.00

2.00

1.00

0.00
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