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

ST130: BASIC STATISTICS

FINAL EXAMINATION – SEMESTER 2, 2012

Time Allowed 3 hours plus 10 minutes reading

Total marks: 100

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. The examination paper consists of two sections:

Section A. (20 marks): This section consists of 20 multiple choice questions worth 1
mark each. Write your answers in the answer sheet provided.
Section B. (80 marks): This section consists of 8 short answer questions worth 10
marks each. Write your answers in the answer booklet provided.
2. ALL questions are compulsory.
3. Start each question on a new page. Show all necessary working.
4. You may use NON PROGRAMABLE calculators.
5. This exam is worth 50% of your overall mark. The minimum exam mark is 40/100.
6. Eton Statistical Tables and formula sheet are provided.
 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 2, 2012

SECTION A: MULTIPLE CHOICE (20 MARKS)

For this section, write all your answers on the answer sheet provided. Each question is worth 1
mark. Circle the letter corresponding to the BEST answer.

1. The amount of time needed to run a 100m race is an example of which type of variable?

(A) a discrete variable (B) a continuous variable

(C) a qualitative variable (D) none of the above

2. What type of sampling is being employed if the country is divided into economic classes
and a sample is chosen from each class to be surveyed?

(A) Cluster sampling (B) Stratified sampling

(C) Random sampling (D) Systematic sampling

3. If you classified the fruit in a basket as apple, orange, or banana, this would be an example
of which level of measurement?

(A) Ordinal (B) Ratio (C) Nominal (D) Interval

4. What are the boundaries of the class 1.87–3.43?

(A) 1.9–3.4 (B) 1.87–3.43 (C) 1.879–3.439 (D) 1.865–3.435

5. Which of the following is an appropriate measure of central tendency for nominal data?

(A) Mean. (B) Median. (C) Mode. (D) Midrange.

6. The ages of students in a class have been put into the frequency distribution below.

Age Number of Students

18 3
19 5
20 28
21 4

What is the median age of these students?

(A) 18 (B) 19 (C) 19.5 (D) 20

7. A student and a professor each choose a number between 1 and 7 (1 and 7 are both possible
choices). What is the probability that the two choose the same number?

(A) 2/49 (B) 7/49 (C) 14/49 (D) 1/49

Page 2 of 9
 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 2, 2012

8. Adam Shapiro, Director of Human Resources, is exploring employee absenteeism at USP.

An analysis of personnel records indicated that 20% of all employees are absent
excessively. This is an example of assigning probabilities by

(A) subjective probability (B) relative frequency

(C) classical probability (D) a priori probability

9. Let A be the event that a student is enrolled in an accounting course, and let S be the event
that a student is enrolled in a statistics course. It is known that 30% of all students are
enrolled in an accounting course and 40% of all students are enrolled in statistics. Included
in these numbers are 15% who are enrolled in both statistics and accounting. A student is
randomly selected, and it is found that the student is enrolled in accounting. What is the
probability that this student is also enrolled in statistics?

(A) 0.15 (B) 0.75 (C) 0.375 (D) 0.50

10. A store manager wants to display 7 different brands of toothpaste in a row. In how many
ways can this be done?

(A) 5040 (B) 7 (C) 42 (D) 720

11. A researcher surveyed college students to study their opinion about the proposed change in
smoking rules. The researcher asked a group of 20 students, 11 of them supported the
change, 6 of them did not, and 3 had no opinion. This is not a binomial model because
(A) 20 students are not enough for a good sample.
(B) The students who strongly supported the change and those who only mildly supported.
the change are counted the same.
(C) There are 3 possible outcomes, not 2.
(D) More than half of the students supported the change.

12. The expected (mean) life of a particular type of light bulb is 1000 hours with a standard
deviation of 50 hours. The life of this bulb is normally distributed. What is the probability
that a randomly selected bulb would last longer than 1150 hours?

(A) 0.4987 (B) 0.9987 (C) 0.0013 (D) 0.5013

13. The standard deviation of a sampling distribution is commonly called

(A) statistical leverage (B) the uniform spread.

(C) statistical margin. (D) the standard error.

14. 10 squirrels were found to have an average weight of 9.6 ounces with a sample standard
deviation is 0.30. Find the 95% confidence interval of the true mean weight.
(A) (8.67, 10.53) (B) (9.36, 9.84) (C) (9.51, 9.69) (D) (9.31, 9.89)

Page 3 of 9
 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 2, 2012

15. At a certain university, the average cost of books per student was $400 per student last
semester. In a sample of 40 students this semester, their average cost was $430 with a
standard deviation of $80. The Dean of Students believes that the costs are greater this
semester. What is the test value for this hypothesis?

(A) 15 (B) 2.37 (C) 0.38 (D) 0.75

16. For the conjecture "The average age of students in this class is more than 20", the null
hypothesis is:

(A) The average age of students in this class is not 20

(B) We do not reject the hypothesis that the average age of students in this class is 20
(C) We reject the hypothesis that the average age of students in this class is 20
(D) The average age of students in this class is 20

17. In regression, the variable being predicted is usually referred to as the

(A) dependent variable (B) independent variable

(C) coefficient of correlation (D) coefficient of determination

18. The following scatter plot indicates

800

600
Y

400

200

0
0 20 40
X 60 80

(A) perfect positive correlation (B) virtually no correlation

(C) positive correlation (D) negative correlation

19. A chi-square goodness-of-fit test is being used to determine if the observed frequencies
from seven categories are significantly different from the expected frequencies from the
seven categories. No parameters are estimated from the data. Using  = 0.05, the degrees of
freedom for this test are

(A) 7 (B) 6 (C) 5 (D) 0

20. In designed experiments for analysis of variance, independent variables are also called

(A) response variables (B) factors

(C) cofactors (D) mitigating variables

Page 4 of 9
 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 2, 2012

SECTION B: SHORT ANSWERS (80 MARKS)

For this section, write all your answers in the answer booklet provided. Each question is worth
10 marks.

Question 1 Start on a new page [5+2+3 = 10 marks]

The results from a statistics exam are as follows:

75 66 77 66 64 73 91 65 59 86 61 86 61 58 70
71 80 58 94 78 62 79 83 54 52 45 82 48 67 55

(A) Construct a grouped frequency distribution table with classes 40-50, 50-60, 60-70, 70 80,
80-90 and 90-100.

(B) Calculate the relative frequency of each class.

(C) Construct a relative frequency histogram for these data and describe what it tells about
the data.

Question 2 Start on a new page [4+6 = 10 marks]

(A) The following table gives the frequency distribution of the values (in thousands of
dollars) of cars owned by all 50 employees of a company in Fiji.

Value of Car ($000s) f

0-10 12
10-20 18
20-30 11
30-40 6
40-50 3

Calculate the standard deviation.

(B) The number of teacher strikes over a 13-year period in Fiji is shown below.

20 18 7 13 7 14 5 9 9 9 10 17 15

(i) Calculate the lower quartile, upper quartile and the median.

(ii) Construct a box-plot for the data and comment on the shape of the distribution.
[3+3=6 marks]

Page 5 of 9
FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 2, 2012

Question 3 Start on a new page [2+2+2+4 = 10 marks]

(A) The probability that a student owns a home computer is 0.4, a student owns a mobile
phone is 0.8 and that a student owns either a home computer or a mobile phone is 0.9.
Find the probability that a student owns both a home computer and a mobile phone.

(B) A flashlight has 6 batteries, 2 of which are defective. If 2 are selected at random without
replacement, find the probability at least one is defective.

(C) A group of 9 people is going to be formed into committees of 4, 3, and 2 people. How
many committees can be formed no person can serve on more than one committee?

(D) What is the probability that a four-digit telephone extension has one or more repeated
digits?

Question 4 Start on a new page [3+4+3 = 10 marks]

(A) Two balls are drawn in succession without replacement from an urn containing 4 red balls
and 3 black balls. Find the probability distribution of a random variable; the number of
black balls.

(B) The weights of boxes of oranges are normally distributed such that 30% of them are
greater than 4kg and 20% are greater than 4.53kg. Estimate the mean and the standard
deviation of the weights.

(C) It is reported that children between 2 and 5 years old watch an average of 25 hours of TV
per week. Assume the variable is normally distributed and the standard deviation is 3
hours. If 20 children between the ages of 2 and 5 are randomly selected, find the
probability that the mean of the number of hours they watch TV will be greater than 263
hours.

Page 6 of 9
 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 2, 2012

Question 5 Start on a new page [5+5 = 10 marks]

(A) At a large university, a study found that no more than 25% of the students who commute
travel more than 14 miles to campus. At  = 0.10, test the findings that if in a sample of
100 students, 30 drove more than 14 miles. Use the P  value method.

(B) The mean age of a sample of 25 people who were playing soccer is 48.7 years, and
standard deviation is 6.8 years. The mean age of a sample of 35 people who were playing
rugby is 55.3 years with a standard deviation is 3.2 years. Can it be concluded at   0.05
that the mean age of those playing soccer is less than those playing rugby. Assume the
populations are normally distributed.

Question 6 Start on a new page [2+4 +4 = 10 marks]

A manager wishes to find out whether there is a relationship between the age of employees
and the number of sick days they take each year. The manager selects a sample randomly 6
of his employees and the data are as follow:

Age, x 18 26 39 48 53 58
Days, y 16 12 9 5 6 2

(A) Compute the value of the correlation coefficient.

(B) Test the significance of the correlation coefficient at   0.05.

(C) Determine the regression line equation, and predict (y) when the age (x) of an employee is
47 years.

Page 7 of 9
 FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 2, 2012

Question 7 Start on a new page [5+5 = 10 marks]

(A) The theory predicts the proportion of beans in the four groups A, B, C and D should be
9:3:3:1. In an experiment with 1600 beans the numbers in the four groups were 882, 313,
287 and 118. Does the experimental result support the theory? Use 5% level of
significance.

(B) A random sample of 300 adults was selected and they were asked if they favor school
teachers punishing students for violence and lack of discipline. Does the sample provide
sufficient information to conclude that the two attributes, gender and opinions of adults,
are dependent? Use a 1% significance level.

In Favor Against No Opinion Total

(F) (A) (N)
Men (M) 93 70 12 175
Women (W) 87 32 6 125
Total 180 102 18 300

Question 8 Start on a new page [10 marks]

A set of data involving 4 different types of food A, B, C, & D tried on 20 Chicks is given below.
All the 20 chicks are treated alike in all respects except the feeding treatments and each feeding
treatment is given to 5 randomly selected chicks. Perform an analysis of variance and test the
hypothesis that the mean weight gain is same for all the 4 foods. The weight gain (in gm) of
chicks due to the foods was recorded as:

55(A) 42( C) 30(B) 85(D)

169 (D) 42(A) 81( C) 154(D)
61(B) 21(A) 169(D) 52(A)
49(A) 97 ( C) 95 (C ) 63(B)
137(D) 112(B) 89(B) 92(C)

   END OF EXAM   

Page 8 of 9
FINAL EXAMINATION SEMESTER 2, 2012

FORMULAE

 f .X  f.X   f .X 
2
2
m  /n
X  
m
1. m
and S2 .
n n 1
2. P( A or B) P( A)  P( B)  P( A and B).
P( A and B)
3. P( B A)  .
P ( A)
n
4. P ( X )    p X q n  X .
X
X 
5. z  .
/ n
pˆ  p
6. z  .
pq / n

7. z 
X 1  X 2    1   2 
.
 12  22

n1 n2
n   xy     x   y 
8. r  .
n  x    x  n  y    y  
    
2 2 2 2


n2
9. t  r .
1 r2
10. 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

(O  E )
11.   
2
2
.
E
12. One-way ANOVA:

X GM 
X ; F
sB2
, where
N sW2

n X  X GM    n  1 s
2
2

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

Page 9 of 9