PROBLEM SET A

Introduction to Statistics and Descriptive Statistics

Name: Date:
DATA
1. State which of the following represents discrete data and which represent
continuous data:
a. Numbers of shares sold each day in the stock market
Answer:
b. Temperature recorded every three hours PAG-ASA
Answer:
c. Lifetimes of television tubes produced by a certain company
Answer:
d. Yearly incomes of college professors
Answer:
e. Lengths of 31 bolts produced by a factory
Answer:
2. Identify which of the following represent a continuous variable and which a
discrete variable:
a. Time of day
Answer:
b. Number of female students in the class
Answer:
c. Age of subjects in an experiment
Answer:
d. Percentage of women in a class
Answer:
e. Speed of runners in a race
Answer:
3. Identify the level of measurement for of each of the following variables:
a. Number of cars ridden by students in the senior class
Answer:
b. Types of cars ridden by students in the sophomore class
Answer:
c. The IQ of your teachers (assume equal interval scaling)
Answer:
d. Proficiency in mathematics is graded into the categories of poor, fair,
and good
Answer:
e. Anxiety over public speaking is scored on a scale of 0-100. (Assume
the difference in anxiety between adjacent units throughout the scale is
not the same.)
Answer:
f. The weight of a group of dieters
 Answer:
g. The time it takes to react the sound of a tone.
Answer:
h. Proficiency in mathematics is scored on a scale of 0-100. The scale is
well standardized and can be thought of as having equal intervals
between adjacent units.
Answer:
i. Ratings of professors by students on a 50-point scale. There is
insufficient basis for assuming equal intervals between adjacent units.
Answer:

DESCRIPTIVE/ INFERENTIAL STATISTICS

1. Indicate which of the following situations involve descriptive statistics and
which involve inferential statistics:
a. An annual stockholders’ report details the assets of the
corporation.
Answer:
b. A math instructor tells his class the number of students who received a
grade of 1.1 in the midterm.
Answer:
c. Calculating the mean of samples set of scores to characterize the
sample.
Answer:
d. Using the sample data from a poll to estimate the opinion of the
population.
Answer:
e. Conducting a correlational study on a sample to determine if
educational level and income in the population.
Answer:
f. A newspaper article reports the average salaries of federal employees
from data collected on all federal employees.
Answer:
2. Indicate whether the researcher is employing inferential or descriptive
statistics.
a. “You measure the number of times ten albino rats press a lever to
obtain food following an injection of amphetamine (an appetite
suppressant). The average number of lever presses made by each rat
during the session was 187. You state that the average number of lever
presses emitted by your ten rats was 187.”
Answer:
 b. “You want to administer a reading achievement test to all the fourth-
grade children in the school district. However, due to the limited number of
test materials and personnel, you select one fourth-grade class from each
elementary school in the district and administer the tests to only these
children. You test 135 out of the total of 674 fourth-graders in the district.
After analyzing the reading achievement scores, you conclude that on the
average, the fourth-graders in the district are reading at the sixth-grade
level.”
Answer:
c. “You are interested in hypertension among young male airport flight
control tower operators. After examining the systolic blood pressure of 80
male tower operators selected from throughout the Philippines between
the ages of 26 and 30, you analyze the data. You conclude that the tower
operators between the ages of 26 and 30 tend to have higher than normal
blood pressure.
Answer:

DEFINITION OF TERMS
1. For each of the hypothetical research situations described in the following,
identify the population and the sample:
a. A memory test was administered to a group of 20 students enrolled in
an introductory psychology course. The purpose of this test was to assess
the mnemonic aids that introductory psychology students usually use for
memorizing key terms.
Answer:

b. A private university desires to estimate the percentage of its students

who have full-time jobs. You interview 50 of its students and ask whether
they hold full-time jobs.
Answer:

c. You are interested in the annual incomes of widows over 65 years of

age living in Cebu City. You select a group of 200 widows in the city which
is over 65 years of age and determine their annual income.
Answer:

2. Identify the sample and population scores:

A machine that cuts steel blanks (used for making bolts) to their proper
length is suspected of being unreliable. The shop foreman decides to
check the output of the machine. On the day of checking, the machine is
set to produce 2-centimeter blanks. The acceptable tolerance is + 0.05
centimeter. Since the machine produces 600 blanks in 1 day, it would take
 too much time to measure all 600.Instead, a representative group of 25 is
selected. The following length s in centimeters were obtained:
2.01 1.99 2.05 1.94 2.05
2.01 2.02 2.04 1.93 1.95
2.03 1.97 2.00 1.98 1.96
2.05 1.96 2.00 2.01 1.99
1.98 1.95 1.97 2.04 2.02
Answer:

MEASURES OF LOCATION (PERCENTILES, QUARTILES AND DECILES)

UNGROUP DATA:
1. Find the percentile ranks of each weight in the data set. The weights are in
kilograms: 78, 82, 86, 88, 92, 97
a.) percentile rank for the weight of 78 kilograms
b.) percentile rank for the weight of 82 kilograms
c.) percentile rank for the weight of 86 kilograms
d.) percentile rank for the weight of 88 kilograms
e.) percentile rank for the weight of 92 kilograms
f.) percentile rank for the weight of 97 kilograms
th
2. What value corresponds to the 30 percentile for the following weights in
kilograms: 78, 82, 86, 88, 92, and 97?
th
3. What value corresponds to the 60 percentile for the Elementary Statistics
test scores presented: 12, 28, 35, 42, 47, 49, and 50?
th
4. Find the test score that corresponds to the 50 percentile in the following test
scores: 5, 12, 15, 16, 20, and 21?

GROUP DATA:
1. Find (a) the quartiles Q1, Q2, and Q3; (b) D1, D2,…,D9;(c) P35 and P60 for the
wages of the 65 employees of CSCST-Main Campus.
Number of
Wages Employees
Php250.00-Php259.90 8
260.00-269.90 10
270.00-279.90 16
280.00-289.90 14
290.00-299.90 10
300.00-309.90 5
310.00-319.90 2
Total 65
MEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCY:
MEAN (UNGROUP DATA):
1. A student kept track of the number of hours he studied each day for a 2-week
period. The following daily scores were recorded (scores are in hours): 2.5, 3.2,
3.8, 1.3, 1.4, 0, 0, 2.6, 5.2, 4.8, 0, 4.6, 2.8, 3.3. Calculate for the mean number of
hours studied per day.
2. An ornithologist studying the glaucous-winged gull on Puget Sound counts the
number of aggressive interactions per minute among a group of sea gulls during
9 consecutive minutes. The following scores resulted: 24, 9, 12, 15, 10, 13, 22,
20, and 14. Calculate the mean number of aggressive interactions per
minute.
3. The timekeeper for a particular mile race uses a stopwatch to determine the
finishing times of the racers. He then calculates that the mean time for the first
three finishers was 4.25 minutes. After checking his stopwatch, he notices to his
horror that the stopwatch begins timing at 15 seconds rather than 0. What is the
correct mean time for the first three finishers?
4. A reading specialist tests the reading speed of children in four sixth-grade
English classes. There are 42 students in class A, 35 in class B, 33 in class C,
and 39 in class D. The mean reading speeds in words per minute for the classes
were as follows: class A, 220; class B, 185; class C, 212; and class D, 172. What
is the mean reading speed for all classes combined?
5. The manufacturer of brand A jogging shoes wants to determine how long the
shoes last before resoling is necessary. She randomly samples from users in
Cebu, Manila and Negros Occidental. In Cebu, the sample size was 28, and the
mean duration before resoling was 7.2 months. In Manila, the sample size was
35, and the mean duration before resoling was 6.3 months. In Negros
Occidental, the sample size was 22, and the mean duration before resoling was
8.5 months. What is the overall mean duration before resoling is necessary for
brand A jogging shoes?

MEAN (GROUP DATA):

1. For 108 randomly selected college students, the following IQ frequency
distribution was obtained. Compute for the mean using (a) long method, (b) short
method, (c) coding method.
Class Limits Frequency
90-98
99-107 22
108-116 43
117-125 28
126-134
2. For 50 antique car owners, the following distribution of the car’s ages was
obtained. Compute for the mean using (a) long method, (b) short method, (c)
coding method.
Class Limits Frequency
16-18
19-21
22-24
25-27
3. Thirty automobiles were tested for fuel efficiency (in miles per gallon). The
following frequency distribution was obtained. Compute for the mean using (a)
long method, (b) short method, (c) coding method.
Class
Boundaries Frequency
7.5-12.5 3
12.5-17.5 5
17.5-22.5 15
22.5-27.5 5
27.5-32.5 2

MEDIAN (UNGROUP DATA):

1. An industrial psychologist observed eight drill-press operators for three
working days. She recorded the number of times each operator pressed the
“faster” button instead of the “stop” button to determine whether the design of the
control panel was contributing to the high rate of accidents in the plant. Given the
scores 4, 7, 0, 2, 7, 3, 6, 7, compute for the median.

2. Twelve secretaries were given a typing test, and the times (in minutes) to
complete it were as follows: 8, 12, 15, 9, 6, 8, 10, 9, 8, 6, 7, 8. Find the median.

3. Nine physicians were selected and given a blood pressure check. Their
systolic pressures are recorded as follows: 135, 120, 116, 119, 121, 125,
132,136, and 124. Compute for the median.

4. The manager of a sports shop recorded the number of baseball caps he sold
during the week. The data are: 132, 121, 119, 116, 130, 121, and 131. Compute
for the median.

SKEWNESS
1. Table below shows the frequency distribution of the daily wages of 65
employees of CSCST-Main Campus. Compute for the skewness.
Number of
 Wages Employees
Php250.00-Php259.90 8
260.00-269.90 10
270.00-279.90 16
280.00-289.90 14
290.00-299.90 10
300.00-309.90 5
310.00-319.90 2
Total 65

BOX PLOT
1. Shown next are the number of farms in six provinces in the Philippines. The
data are as follows: 498, 767, 633, 747, 1369, and 1139. Construct a box plot.

2. The following are the sizes of police force of 10 largest provinces of the
Philippines in 2005 (the numbers represents hundreds of police): 29.3, 7.6, 12.1,
4.7, 6.2, 1.9, 3.9, 2.8, 2.0, and 1.7. Construct a box plot for that data.

3. The data presented next are the numbers of calculators sold during a
randomly selected week: 8, 12, 23, 5, 9, 15, and 3.Construct a box plot.