SIX1004 Statistics
Tutorial 2
1. A university professor saved every e-mail received from students in a large
introductory statistics class during one term. The raw data looks like this:
E-mail title Date Student
A question about 13/4/2018 Jennifer Paulsen
mean and median
Re: A question 13/4/2018 Jennifer Paulsen
about mean and
median
Sorry prof I missed 16/4/2018 Robert Polansky
your class
Annoying 16/4/2018 Jason Pritchard
classmates
. .
. .
Table 1: Raw data of all e-mails received from statistics students
From Table 1, he then counted the number of students who sent 1, 2, 3, …. e-mails.
The results are given in Table 2.
Number of Frequency
emails sent
1 80
2 41
3 16
4 7
5 5
6 2
7 1
8 2
21 1
Total 155
Table 2: Frequency table of number of students who sent 1,2,3,… emails.
Data source: Prof. Paul Velleman, Cornell University, USA.
(a) How many emails did the professor receive?
(b) Create four additional columns for Table 2, one for relative frequency, one for
percentage, one for cumulative frequency, and one for cumulative percentage.
(c) From (b), find the percentage of students who sent 3 or less emails to the professor.
(d) Use an online bar plot tool such as the Plotly Chart Studio ([Link]
[Link]) to make a bar plot for the data in Table 2. For compactness, group
the frequencies for the classes 8 and 21 into a single class “8+”. Make sure your
bar plot has properly-labelled x and y-axis names.
(see the link to the short video tutorial in Spectrum)
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2. An experiment was performed to see whether sensory deprivation over an extended
period of time affects the alpha-wave patterns produced by the brain. In 1972, Gendreau
et al. reported a study of 20 inmates in a Canadian prison who were randomly split into
two groups. In one group, the members placed in solitary confinement. In another, the
members were allowed to stay in their own cells. After seven days, alpha-wave
frequencies (measured in Hz) were measured for all subjects (Table 3).
No. Non-confined Confined
1 9.6 9.9
2 10.3 9.3
3 10.4 9.7
4 10.4 10.9
5 10.5 9.2
6 10.7 9.6
7 10.7 10.4
8 10.9 10.3
9 11.1 9.5
10 11.2 9.0
Table 3: Alpha-wave frequencies (in Hz) of 20 Canadian inmates. The subjects were randomised into
non-confined and confined treatment groups.
(a) Calculate the sample mean and standard deviation for both groups. Which group
has the larger sample mean?
(b) Stem-and-leaf plots easy to make and useful for visualising distribution of small
data sets. Make them for both groups by hand.
(c) Alternatively, we can also visualise the data in Table 3 using histograms (Figure
3). It is not necessary to make histograms for this course but you can learn how
to use Chart Studio to make them following the link in Spectrum.
Figure 3: Histogram of alpha-waves frequency for the nonconfined (n=10) and confined (n=10) groups,
respectively.
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(i) Complete the following table using information from Fig. 3:
Upper class Cumulative frequency
boundary Nonconfined Confined
9.45 0
9.95 1
4
10.95
10
(ii) The table in part (i) can be used to create an ogive graph (Fig. 4). Based
on this figure, fill in the blanks for the following statements:
(I) The …… percentile of alpha-waves frequency in the
nonconfined group is about 11 Hz.
(II) The median of alpha-waves frequency in the confined group is
about ….. Hz.
(III) Approximately ….. of the non-confined group have alpha-waves
frequency of 10 Hz or less, but about ……. of the confined group
have alpha frequency of 10 Hz or less.
Figure 4: Ogive graph of the alpha-waves data set.
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