Lecturer: Mr.

JC Kabala 23 April 2021

Operations Management Techniques 1: PBT150S

Tutorial – Chapter 2: Descriptive Statistics
Question 1
The Highway Patrol, using radar, checked the speeds (in mph) of 30 passing motorists at a
checkpoint. The results are listed below.

44 38 41 50 36 36 43 42 49 48
35 40 37 41 43 50 45 45 39 38
50 41 47 36 35 40 42 43 48 33

1.1. Construct a frequency distribution, a relative frequency distribution, and a cumulative

frequency distribution using six classes;
1.2. Estimate the percent of motorists driving between 36 mph and 44 mph;
1.3. Construct a frequency histogram;
1.4. Construct a relative frequency histogram;
1.5. Construct a frequency polygon;
1.6. Construct a ogive;
1.7. Estimate the number of motorists driving at most 40 mph
1.8. From the frequency distribution, estimate the sample mean; variance and standard
deviation speeds passing motorists.
1.9. Assuming normal distribution, use the empirical rule to estimate the number of motorists
whose speeds are between 46.76 mph and 56.68 mph; and
1.10. Apply Chebychev’s Theorem to the data using k = 3. What can you conclude?
Question 2
The time to failure in hours of an electronic component subjected to an accelerated life test is
shown in Table below. To accelerate the failure test, the units were tested at an elevated
temperature.

127 131 140 124 129 121 142 151 160 125

2.1. What is the sample mean time to failure?

2.2. What is the median time to failure?
2.3. What is the mode time to failure?
2.4. What is the range time to failure?
2.5. Compare yours answers in (2.1); (2.2.) and (2.3.). Comment.
2.6. What the sample variance and standard deviation time to failure.
2.7. Find the five-number summary.
2.8. Find interquartile range of the preschool children weights.
2.9. Draw a box-and-whisker plot that represents the data.
2.10. What can you conclude from the result?

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Lecturer: Mr. JC Kabala 23 April 2021

Question 3
Most of South Africa’s power stations are coal-fired. Assume a random sample of 10 power
stations were selected and their coal usage and electricity for 2012 was obtained. The data are:

Coal used in 2012 Electricity generated

(in million tonnes) (million kilowatt hours)
15 35
6 18
10 24
18 32
9 24
7 20
14 32
11 29
5 14
8 22

3.1. Identify and draw a graph to display the relationship between Coal used and Electricity
generated.
3.2. What conclusions can you draw?

Question 4
A safety engineer wishes to use the following data to show the number of deaths from the
collision of passenger cars with trucks on a particular highway.
Year 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Number of Deaths 12 17 22 21 16 13 11 12

4.1. Use a time series chart to display the data.

4.2. Describe any trends shown.
Question 5
Construct a stem-and-leaf display for the following data

11.3 9.6 10.4 7.5 8.3 10.5 10.0

9.3 8.1 7.7 7.5 8.4 6.3 8.8

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