MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY SPRING 2020

DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

BA 1502/BAS152 – BUSINESS STATISTICS

Recitation #1

Wednesday, March 4, 2020 11:45, G 110

1) Compute the mean, median, mode, variance, standard deviation, coefficient of variation for the
following sample.

3 0 4 -2 -1 4 6
2) In one year, earnings growth of the 500 largest U.S. corporations averaged 9.2%; the standard
deviation was 3.5%.

a. It can be guaranteed that 84% of these earnings growth figures will be in what interval?

b. Using the empirical rule, it can be estimated that approximately 68% of these earnings growth figures
will be in what interval?

3) Students in a business statistics class were asked what grade they expected in the course and whether
they worked on additional problems beyond those assigned by the instructor. The following table gives
proportions of students in each of eight joint classifications.

a. Find the probability that a randomly chosen student from this class worked on additional problems.

b. Find the probability that a randomly chosen student from this class expects an A.

c. Find the probability that a randomly chosen student who worked on additional problems expects an A.

d. Find the probability that a randomly chosen student who expects an A worked on additional problems.

e. Find the probability that a randomly chosen student who worked on additional problems expects a
grade below B.

f. Are “worked additional problems” and “expected grade” statistically independent?

4) The probability of a telesales representative making a sale on a customer call is 0.20

Find the probability that

(a) no sales are made in 10 calls,

(b) more than 3 sales are made in 10 calls.

5) A radioactive source emits 4 particles on average during a five-second period.

a) Calculate the probability that it emits 3 particles during a 5-second period.

b) Calculate the probability that it emits at least one particle during a 5- second period.

c) During a ten-second period, what is the probability that 6 particles are emitted?

6) The finish times for marathon runners during a race are normally distributed with a mean of 195
minutes and a standard deviation of 25 minutes.

a) What is the probability that a runner will complete the marathon within 3 hours?

b) Calculate to the nearest minute, the time by which the first 8% runners have completed the
marathon.

c) What proportion of the runners will complete the marathon between 3 hours and 4 hours?

7) Customers arrive, on average, every 10 minutes to gas station. Assume that the distribution of the
time between arrivals follows an exponential distribution. Suppose that a customer has just left the gas
station. What is the probability that the cashier at the gas station has more than 15 minutes before the
next customer arrive?

8) The average lifetime of a light bulb is 3000 hours with a standard deviation of 696 hours. A simple
random sample of 36 bulbs is taken.

(a) What are the expected value, standard deviation, and shape of the sampling distribution of x?

(b) What is the probability that the average lifetime in the sample will be equal to or greater than 3219.24
hours?

9) A corporation receives 120 applications for positions from recent college graduates in business.
Assuming that these applicants can be viewed as a random sample of all such graduates, what is the
probability that between 35% and 45% of them are women if 40% of all recent college graduates in
business are women?