The University of the South Pacific

Serving the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING, INFORMATION &

MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

DIVISION OF MATHEMATICS & STATISTICS

ST130: BASIC STATISTICS

FINAL EXAMINATION – SEMESTER 1, 2010

Time Allowed 3 hours plus 10 minutes reading

Total marks: 120

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. There are six (6) questions in this paper and all are compulsory.
2. Write your answers in the answer booklet provided and start each question
on a new page.
3. Show all necessary working. Partial marks will be awarded for partially
correct answers.
4. You may use NON PROGRAMABLE calculators.
5. This exam is worth 55% of face-to-face and 60% of DFL students overall
mark. The minimum exam mark is 48/120.
6. Eton Statistical Tables are provided.
 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2010

QUESTION 1 [3+2+5+10=20 marks]

A. Classify each of the following attributes as either categorical or numerical. For those that are
numerical, determine whether they are discrete or continuous.
i. Gender of the next baby born at a particular hospital in Fiji.
ii. Thickness of the gelatin coating of a vitamin E capsule.
iii. The number of checks received by a grocery store during a given month.
iv. Brand of computer purchased by the USP bookshop.

B. What are open-ended frequency distributions? Why are they necessary?

C. The following data give the results of a sample survey. The letters A, B, and C represent the
three categories.
A B B A C B C C C A
C B C A C C B C C A
A B C C B C B A C A

i. Prepare a categorical frequency distribution table.

ii. Construct a pie chart for the percentage distribution.
iii. What percentage of elements in this sample belongs to category A or B?

[2+2+1=5 marks]

D. The number of items rejected daily by a manufacturer because of defects was recorded for
the last 25 days. The results are as follows:
21 8 17 22 19 18 19 14 17 11 6 21 25
19 9 12 16 16 10 29 24 6 21 20 25

i. Construct a frequency distribution for these data, using the class intervals 6-10, 11-15,
16-20, 21-25 and 26-30.
ii. Construct a histogram for the relative frequency distribution.
iii. What is the relationship between the area under the histogram you have constructed and
the relative frequency of the observations?
[5+3+2=10 marks]

Page 2 of 8
FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2010

QUESTION 2 [3+7+10=20 marks]

A. The stopping distance on a wet surface was determined for 20 vehicles, each traveling at 60
km/hr. The data (in metres) are shown on the following stem-and leaf display:

3 3 7 8 4
4 0 2 7 7 9
5 1 5 5 6
6 0 0 1 8
7 2 0
8 6

Find the mean and the standard deviation of these stopping distances.

B. The cash compensations received in 2009 by the highest-paid executives of 12 international

companies (in $000s) were as follows:
2215, 1888, 1477, 1059, 977, 956, 947, 924, 899, 856, 856, 803
i. Calculate the values of three quartiles, 40th percentile and the percentile rank of 977.
ii. Construct a box-plot and comment on the skew of the distribution of the executives’
compensations.
[4+3=7 marks]

C. The following table gives the grouped frequency distribution of the weights of all 100
babies born at CWM hospital in 2009.

Weight (pound) 3–5 5–7 7–9 9 – 11 11 – 13

Number of babies 5 30 40 20 5

i. Find the mean.

ii. Calculate the variance and standard deviation.
iii. Construct a percentile graph and use it to approximate the median and the percentile
rank of 4.
[2+4+4= 10 marks]

Page 3 of 8
 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2010

QUESTION 3 [2+4+4+5+5=20 marks]

A. The players’ ID cards at Inter-District Soccer Championship held in Fiji contain 1 letter and
4 digits. The letter can be chosen from A, B, C and D, and the 4 digits can be chosen from 1,
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. How many ID cards can be issued if the digits cannot be repeated and
the letter gets the first placement?

B. Approximately three out of every four Fijians who filed a tax return received a refund in a
particular year. If three individuals are chosen at random from amongst those who filed a
tax return that year, find the probability that

i. Exactly two received a refund.

ii. At most two received a refund.

C. A survey was conducted to find out what male and female drivers do when they are lost.
After a thorough analysis, the following joint probabilities were developed:
Action Male Female
Consult a map 0.25 0.14
Ask for direction 0.12 0.28
Continue driving 0.13 0.08

i. What is the probability that a man would ask for direction?

ii. Are gender and consulting a map independent? Explain.

D. Two cards are drawn at random (without replacement) from a regular deck of 52 cards.
What is the probability that the first card is a red and the second card is heart?

E. A group of 12 people is going out town on Saturday night. The group will take three cars
with four people in each car. If they distribute themselves among the cars at random, what is
the probability that Simon and Peter will be in the same car?

Page 4 of 8
 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2010

QUESTION 4 [4+4+4+4+4=20 marks]

A. Two balls are drawn in succession without replacement from an urn containing 4 red balls
and 3 black balls. Let X denote the number of black balls. Find the probability distribution
of X.

B. A card is to be selected from an ordinary deck of 52 cards. Suppose that a casino will pay
$10 if you select an ace. If you fail to select an ace, you are required to pay the casino $1.
How much money does the casino expect to win, if you play the game 20 times?

C. In a survey, 64% of all airplanes arriving at Nadi Airport are late. If 7 airplanes are selected
at random, find the probability using the binomial formula that exactly 4 will arrive late.

D. The average price of a new home is $145,500. Suppose that the standard deviation of prices
is $1500 and the variable is normally distributed. Find the maximum and minimum prices of
the houses a contractor will build to include the middle 80% of the market.

E. A survey found that the delivery times for all food orders at a particular restaurant during
the lunch hour are normally distributed with a mean of 6.7 minutes and a standard deviation
of 2.1 minutes. Find the probability that the mean delivery time for a sample of 16 such
orders at this restaurant is between 7 and 8 minutes.

Page 5 of 8
FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2010

QUESTION 5 [5+5+5+5=20 marks]

A. A medical statistician wants to estimate the average weight loss of people who are on a new
diet plan. In a preliminary study, she found that the smallest weight loss was 3 kg and the
largest weight loss was 39 kg. How large a sample should be drawn to estimate the mean
weight loss to within 2 kg, with 90% confidence? Hint: use   Range/4.

B. In a survey of drug use among 995 Suva teenagers, the following results were reported.
Estimate with 90% confidence the proportion of all Suva teenagers who are daily smokers
or occasional smokers.

Source Daily smokers Occasional smokers Ex-smokers Never smoked

Percentage (%) 21.7 7.4 31.2 39.7

C. The sugar content of the syrup in canned peaches is normally distributed. If a random
sample of 10 cans has a standard deviation of 4.8 milligrams. Find the 95% confidence
interval for variance and standard deviation.

D. A study claims that all adults spend on average of 14 hours or more on chores during the
weekend. A researcher wanted to check if this claim is true. A random sample of 200 adults
taken by this researcher showed that these adults spend an average of 13.75 hours on chores
during a weekend with a standard deviation of 3.0 hours. Find the P-value for the
hypothesis test with the alternative hypothesis that all adults spend less than 14 hours on
chores during a weekend. Will you reject the null hypothesis at   0.05.

Page 6 of 8
 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2010

QUESTION 6 [5+5+5+5=20 marks]

A. A diet doctor claims that the average Fijian is more than 5 kg overweight. To test this claim,
a random of 20 Fijians were weighed, and the difference between their actual weight and
their ideal weight was calculated. The mean and the standard deviation of that difference
were 6.5 and 2.2 kg, respectively. Can we conclude, with   0.05, that enough evidence
exists to show that the doctor’s claim is true?

B. A sample of 600 male adults showed that they spend an average of 20 minutes a day
exercising with a standard deviation of 6 minutes. Another sample of 500 female adults
showed that they spend an average of 35 minutes a day exercising with a standard deviation
of 8 minutes. Test at the 1% significance level if the mean time spent exercising per day by
all male adults is less than the mean time spent exercising per day by all female adults.

C. An emergency service wishes to see whether a relationship exists between the outside
temperature and the number of emergency calls it receives for a seven-hour period.
Temperature, x 68 74 82 88 93 99 101
No. of calls, y 7 4 8 10 11 9 13

i. Compute the value of the correlation coefficient.

ii. Find the equation of the regression line, and predict y ' when x  80 .
[2+3=5 marks]

D. The data show the costs per bottle (in dollars) of three different types of wines. At   0.01
is there enough evidence to conclude that there is no difference in the price per bottle of
three different types of wine?
Type 1 Type 2 Type 3
11 15 13
10 7 11
20 9 18
10 10 10
17 4 22
9 5 15

   The End   

Page 7 of 8
FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 1, 2010

Formulas Used:

1. z - test for comparing two means: z 

X 1  X 2    1   2 
.
 12  22

n1 n2
n   xy     x   y 
2. Sample correlation coefficient: r  .
 n  x 2    x 2   n  y 2    y 2 
       
3. The regression line y '  a  bx, where

a
  y    x     x   xy  ;
2

b
n   xy     x    y 
.
n  x    x n   x2     x 
2 2 2

4. One-way ANOVA:

X GM 
X ; F  s 2
B
, where
2
N s
W

n X  X GM    n  1 s
2
2

 and sW2 
2 i i i i
s .
k 1   n  1
B
i

Page 8 of 8