Sample Exams
Math 121
Fall 1994
Exam 1
Please write in the blue books provided. When calculations are asked for,
show the details of your work. When interpretations or explanations are
called for, be clear and concise. You may use a calculator but may not
use Minitab on any part of the exam.
- The following stemplot represents the yearly percentage increases in
Dickinson's comprehensive fees over the past 22 years. (3 | 8 means that
one year had a percentage increase of 3.8%.)
- In what proportion of these years was the percentage increase greater
than 10%?
- The median percentage increase is 7.75%. Without calculating the
mean, do you expect it to be greater than the median or less than the
median?
- Is this distribution skewed to the left, skewed to the right, or
roughly symmetric?
- What is the mode of the percentage increases as represented here?
- Consider the question of whether women tend to pay more for a haircut
than do men. Students were asked to report the total cost of their most
recent haircut. A total of 17 men and 15 women responded. Their results
follow with the amounts recorded in dollars; notice that these values have
been ordered.
men: | 0.00 | 4.00 | 4.25 |
6.00 | 7.00 | 7.00 | 8.00 | 8.00 |
| 8.00 | 10.00 |
10.00 | 10.00 | 10.00 | 12.00 |
15.00 | 15.00 | 17.00 |
women: | 11.00 | 12.00 | 14.00 |
15.00 | 15.00 | 15.00 |
15.00 | 15.00 |
| 18.00 | 18.00
| 20.00 | 20.00 | 25.00 | 25.00 |
50.00 |
- Calculate the median haircut price for the men who responded and the
median haircut price for the women who responded.
- The lower and upper quartiles for the men's haircut prices are $6.50
and $11.00; the lower and upper quartiles for the women's haircut prices
are $15.00 and $20.00. Use this information to construct (on the same
scale) modified boxplots of the haircut prices for both sexes.
- Write a few sentences comparing and contrasting the distributions of
haircut prices between men and women. Indicate whether the data support
the proposition than women tend to pay more for haircuts than do men.
Also comment on whether every woman pays more for a haircut than does
every man.
- Suppose that a company employs five men and five women. Construct a
hypothetical example which demonstrates that even though the mean salary
for men is much higher than the mean salary for women, it is possible for
most of the women in the company to earn more than most of the men. List
five hypothetical men's salaries and five hypothetical women's salaries
for which the following conditions hold:
- the mean salary for men is higher than the mean salary for women
- four of the five lowest salaries in the company belong to men
- four of the five highest salaries in the company belong to women
- Describe a situation (not taken from your Activity Guide )
in which you would expect a fairly strong association between two
variables that do not have a cause-and-effect relationship.
- In a study of whether a relationship exists between a child's
aptitude and the age at which he/she first speaks, researchers recorded
the age (in months) of a child's first speech and the child's score on an
aptitude test. These data for these 21 children follow:
child | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
5 | 6 | 7
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
age | 15 | 2 | 10 | 9 |
15 | 20 | 18
| 11 | 8 | 20 | 7 |
score | 95 | 71 | 83 | 91
| 102 | 87 | 93 | 100 | 104
| 94 | 113 |
|
child | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
| 21 |
age | 9 | 10 | 11 | 11
| 10 | 12 | 42 | 17 | 11
| 10 |
score | 96 | 83 | 84 | 102
| 100 | 105 | 57 | 121 | 86
| 100 |
The least squares line for predicting aptitude score from age at first
speech turns out to be
score = 110 - 1.13 * age; the value of the correlation coefficient is
-0.640. The following scatterplot displays this relationship.
- What proportion of the variability in aptitude scores is explained by
the least squares line with age at first speech?
- What would the least squares line predict for the aptitude score of a
child who first spoke at 20 months?
- Calculate the residual for child 6.
- Judging from the scatterplot, which child has the largest (in
absolute value) residual? What is unusual about this child?
- Which child has the smallest fitted value?
- Which child seems to be the most influential observation?
- Suppose that college students are asked to identify their preferences
in political affiliation (Democrat, Republican, or Independent) and in ice
cream (chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry). Suppose that their responses
are represented in the following two-way table (with some of the totals
left for you to calculate):
| chocolate |
vanilla | strawberry | total
|
Democrat | 26 | 43 | 13 | 82
|
Republican | 45 | 12 | 8 | 65
|
Independent | 9 | 13 | 4 | |
total | | 68 |
25 | 173 |
- What proportion of the respondents prefer chocolate ice cream?
- What proportion of the respondents are Independents?
- What proportion of Independents prefer chocolate ice cream?
- What proportion of those who prefer chocolate ice cream are
Independents?
- Study the following segmented bar graph displaying the conditional
distributions of ice cream preference among the three political
affiliations. Write a few sentences commenting on whether the
(fictitious) data reveal any relationship between political affiliation
and ice cream preference.
Math 121
Fall 1994
Exam 2
Please write in the blue books provided. Show the details of your
calculations. You may use a calculator, your Activity Guide
(including the table of standard normal probabilities), and your homework
solutions on this exam.
- A 1989 sample of 130 college women who visited a gynecologist at a
particular university in the northeastern U.S. indicated that 113 were
sexually experienced.
- Assuming that these women were a simple random sample from the
population of all women at that university, calculate a 95% confidence
interval for the proportion of the population who are sexually active.
- Would the interval have been wider, narrower, or the same width if
520 women had been sampled? (You need not perform any calculation.)
Explain.
- Would the interval have been wider, narrower, or the same width if it
had turned out that 73 of the 130 women in the sample had been sexually
experienced? (You need not perform any calculation.) Explain.
- Write a sentence interpreting what this interval means (as if this
were a random sample).
- Do you think it is reasonable to assume that these women form a
random sample? Explain.
- Suppose you want to estimate the proportion of American households
that own a cat.
- In order to estimate this proportion to within ± .05 with 90%
confidence, how many households would you need to sample? (Supply your
own guess concerning the proportion in determining the necessary sample
size; identify this guess as such.)
- If you want to estimate this proportion to within ± .10 with 90%
confidence, would you need to sample more or fewer households than in
(a)? (You need not perform the calculation.) Explain.
- If you want to estimate this proportion to within ± .02 with 95%
confidence, would you need to sample more or fewer households than in
(a)? (You need not do the calculation.) Explain.
- Explain how your answer to (a) would have differed if you wanted to
estimate the proportion of all Pennsylvanian households that own
a cat to within ± .05 with 90% confidence. (You need not perform any
calculation.) Explain.
- Do not perform any calculations to answer the following. Explain
your reasoning in each case.
- Three researchers Alex, Bob, and Chuck independently select random
samples from the same population. The sample sizes are 1000 for Alex,
4000 for Bob, and 250 for Chuck. Each researcher constructs a 95%
confidence interval for from his data. The
half-widths of the three intervals are .015, .031, and .062. Match each
half-width with its researcher.
- Two researchers Donna and Eileen each select random samples of size
1000 from different populations and construct 95% confidence intervals for
. The half-width of Donna's interval is .030 and the
half-width of Eileen's is .025. Given that the sample proportions were
=.20 and =.40, match each
researcher with her sample proportion.
- A researcher Fran selects 100 subjects at random from a population,
observes 50 successes, and calculates five confidence intervals. The
confidence levels are 80%, 90%, 95%, 98%, and 99%, and the five intervals
are (.402,.598), (.371,.629), (.418,.582), (.436,.564), and (.384,.616).
Match each interval with its confidence level.
- Suppose that weights of bags of potato chips coming from a factory
follow a normal distribution with mean 12.8 ounces and standard deviation
.6 ounces.
- What proportion of bags weigh more than 12 ounces?
- What proportion of bags weigh between 13 and 14 ounces?
- Determine the weight such that 12.5% of the bags weigh more than that
weight.
- If the manufacturer wants to keep the mean at 12.8 ounces but adjust
the standard deviation so that only 1% of the bags weigh less than 12
ounces, how small does he/she need to make that standard deviation?
- Suppose that 80% of all Pennsylvania residents eat turkey on
Thanksgiving. Suppose further that you plan to select a simple random
sample of 300 Pennsylvania residents and to determine the proportion of
them who eat turkey on Thanksgiving.
- Is 80% a parameter or a statistic? What symbol have we used to
represent it?
- According to the Central Limit Theorem, how would the sample
proportion who eat turkey on Thanksgiving vary from sample to sample?
- Determine the probability that less than three-fourths of the sample
eat turkey on Thanksgiving.
- Would the answer to (c) be smaller, larger, or the same if a sample
size of 800 was used? (You need not perform the calculation.) Explain.
- One can show that in this context Å
0.15. Write a sentence or two explaining for a layperson what this
statement means.
Math 121
Fall 1994
Exam 3
Please write in the blue books provided. When calculations are asked for,
show the details of your work. When interpretations or explanations are
called for, be clear and concise. You may use a calculator but may not
use Minitab on any part of the exam. You may use your Activity Guide
and your homework solutions.
- Suppose that you want to test whether the mean age of a bride in
Cumberland County differs from 30 years of age. You gather sample data on
24 marriage licenses and find the following ages for the brides:
22 | 32 | 50 | 25 | 33
| 27 | 45 | 47 | 30 | 44
| 23 | 39 |
24 | 22 | 16 | 73 | 27
| 36 | 24 | 60 | 26 | 23
| 28 | 36 |
The mean of these ages is 33.83 and the standard deviation of these ages
is 13.56.
- Are the 33.83 and 13.56 parameters or statistics? Indicate the
symbols that we have used to represent them.
- Record the null and alternative hypotheses for the test of
significance to address the issue stated above.
- Calculate the test statistic for this test.
- Use the appropriate table to calculate the test's p-value as
accurately as you can.
- Write a sentence or two describing and explaining your conclusion
about whether the mean age of a bride in Cumberland County differs from 30
years of age.
- An article appearing in the October 4, 1994 issue of The
Harrisburg Evening-News reported that Judge Lance Ito (who is trying
the O.J. Simpson murder case) had received 812 letters from around the
country on the subject of whether to ban cameras from the courtroom. Of
these 812 letters, 800 expressed the opinion that cameras should be
banned.
- Use this sample information to conduct a test of significance of
whether more than 95% of all American adults feel that cameras should be
banned from the courtroom.
- Is the test result statistically significant at the .01 level?
- List the assumptions required for the significance test procedure to
be valid in this situation. Comment on whether the assumptions seem to be
satisfied.
- Some researchers wanted to investigate whether the proportion of
college students who drink alcohol decreased between 1982 and 1991. They
analyzed data from two national studies. In a national study conducted in
1982, 4324 of a sample of 5252 college students said that they drank
alcohol. In a similar national study conducted in 1991, 3820 of a sample
of 4845 college students said that they drank alcohol.
- What proportion of the 1982 sample drank alcohol? What proportion of
the 1991 sample drank alcohol?
- State the null and alternative hypotheses for testing the
researchers' conjecture in both symbols and words.
- Calculate the test statistic and the p-value of the test.
- Is the decrease in sample proportions statistically significant at
the .02 level? Explain.
These national studies also asked students more specific questions about
their drinking habits. Students were asked whether they have gotten into
fights after drinking and whether they have had trouble with the law after
drinking. The following table summarizes the sample results and also
reports the test statistic of the significance test of whether the
population proportions differ between 1982 and 1991.
| 1982 sample | 1991
sample | test statistic |
gotten into fight after drinking | 11.6% | 17.2% |
-7.205 |
trouble with law because of drinking | 4.4% | 7.6% |
-6.115 |
- Write a few sentences summarizing the results of these two tests and
the test that you performed concerning abstention from drinking alcohol.
- Suppose that 41 Dickinson students are asked to measure the length
of one of their feet. Suppose that the sample mean foot length turns out
to be 23.4 centimeters and that the sample standard deviation of the foot
lengths turns out to be 5.1 centimeters.
- Find a 96% confidence interval for µ, the mean foot length among
all Dickinson students.
- Would you expect about 96% of all Dickinson students to have foot
lengths within this interval? Explain.
- If you had found a 90% confidence interval for µ, how would it
have differed from the 96% confidence interval?
- If the sample had included 141 students (and all else had turned out
the same), how would the confidence interval have been affected?
- If the sample standard deviation had turned out to be 3.7 centimeters
(and all else had turned out the same), how would the confidence interval
have been affected?
- If the sample mean had turned out to be 25.4 centimeters (and all
else had turned out the same), how would the confidence interval have been
affected?
- Use the t-table to find (as accurately as possible):
- the critical value t * for a 70% confidence interval based on
27 degrees of freedom
-
-
-
- "The underlying principle of all statistical inference techniques is
that one uses sample statistics to learn something (i.e., to
infer something) about population parameters ." Convince me
that you understand this statement by writing a short paragraph describing
a situation in which you might use a sample statistic to infer something
about a population parameter. Clearly identify the sample, population,
statistic, and parameter in your example. Be as specific as possible. Do
not use any example which appears in the Activity Guide.
Math 121
Spring 1995
Exam 1
Please write in the blue books provided. When calculations are asked for,
show the details of your work. When interpretations or explanations are
called for, be clear and concise. You may use a calculator but may not
use Minitab on any part of the exam. There are four questions, worth 25
points each, so please budget your time appropriately.
- The following stemplot represents the yearly percentage increases in
Dickinson's comprehensive fees over the past 22 years. (3 | 8 means that
one year had a percentage increase of 3.8%.)
- Calculate the median of these percentage increases.
- The lower quartile is 6.7 and the upper quartile is 9.7. Use this
information to test for outliers and then to construct a modified boxplot
of the distribution of percentage increases.
- Write a few sentences commenting on key features of the distribution
of percentage increases.
- Consider the following data dealing with Broadway shows:
show | receipts | % capacty |
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches | $326,121 | 90.0 |
Blood Brothers | $154,064
| 54.5 |
Cats | $346,723 | 70.7 |
Crazy for You | $463,377
| 85.5 |
Falsettos | $86,864 | 39.8 |
Fool Moon | $163,802 |
54.2 |
The Goodbye Girl | $429,158
| 79.5 |
Guys and Dolls | $457,087
| 76.7 |
Jelly's Last Jam | $253,951
| 61.6 |
Kiss of the Spider Woman |
$406,498 | 91.5 |
Les Miserables | $481,973
| 91.0 |
Miss Saigon | $625,804 |
95.0 |
Phantom of the Opera |
$674,609 | 101.7 |
Shakespeare for my Father |
$78,898 | 72.8 |
The Sisters Rosensweig | $340,862 | 98.5 |
Someone Who'll Watch over Me | $73,903 | 41.7 |
Tommy | $590,334 | 86.0 |
The Will Rogers Follies |
$265,561 | 64.9 |
The following scatterplot reveals the relationship between receipts and
attendance as measured by the percentage of the theater's capacity:
The least squares line turns out to be: receipts = -265,892 + 8118 (%
capacity); this line is drawn on the scatterplot.
- Guess the value of the correlation coefficient between receipts and
percentage capacity.
- What would the regression equation predict for the receipts of a show
that filled 80% of its theater's capacity?
- Calculate the fitted value and residual for Cats .
- Without doing the calculations, identify which show has the largest
(in absolute value) residual.
- Which show has the smallest fitted value?
- The following table classifies the living arrangements of American
children (under 18 years of age) according to their race and which
parent(s) they live with:
| both | just mom
| just dad | neither | row total |
white | 40,842,340 | 9,017,140 | 2,121,680 | 1,060,840 | 53,042,000 |
black | 3,833,640 | 5,750,460 | 319,470 | 745,430 | 10,649,000 |
Hispanic | 4,974,720 |
2,176,440 | 310,920 | 310,920 | 7,773,000 |
column total | 49,650,700
| 16,944,040 | 2,752,070 |
2,117,190 | 71,464,000 |
- What proportion of the children are black?
- What proportion of black children live with both parents?
- What proportion of those who live with both parents are black?
The following segmented bar graph represents the conditional distributions
of living arrangements for each race category:
- Comment on any relationship between a child's race and his/her living
arrangements as revealed in this graph.
-
- Create a set of ten hypothetical exam scores for which the mean is
greater than four times the median.
- The midhinge of a distribution is defined to be the average (mean) of
the lower quartile and the upper quartile. The midrange of a distribution
is defined to be the average (mean) of the minimum and the maximum. Is
the midhinge resistant to outliers? Is the midrange resistant to
outliers? Briefly explain.
- Suppose that 80 of 100 male applicants to a graduate school are
accepted, while 60 of 100 female applicants are accepted. Breaking down
the applications into the school's two separate programs reveals:
Program A:
72 males accepted out of 80 male applicants
19 females accepted out of 20 female applicants
Program B:
8 males accepted out of 20 male applicants
41 females accepted out of 80 female applicants
Explain why it happens in this example that although each program accepts
a higher proportion of females than males, the school as a whole accepts a
higher proportion of males than females. (You need not perform the
calculations to verify this statement.)
- Identify a pair of variables (not taken from your Activity Guide) for
which you would expect to see a strong correlation but not a
cause-and-effect relationship. Suggest an explanation for the association.
- Suppose that the cases for a study are Dickinson College faculty
members. Identify one measurement variable, one non-binary categorical
variable, and one binary categorical variable that one could measure on
these cases. Identify which type of variable is which.
Math 121
Spring 1995
Exam 2
Please write in the blue books provided. Show the details of your
calculations. You may
use a calculator, your Activity Guide (including the table of
standard normal
probabilities), and your homework solutions on this exam. Notice that
even though every
question contains multiple parts, you can answer later parts whether or
not you correctly
answer earlier parts. Each of the five questions is worth 20 points.
- In a recent study of Vietnam veterans, researchers found that in a
sample of 2101
veterans, 777 had been divorced at least once.
- Assuming that these women were a simple random sample from the
population of all
Vietnam veterans, calculate a 90% confidence interval for the proportion
of the population
who have been divorced at least once.
- Would the interval have been wider, narrower, or the same width if
1101 veterans had
been sampled? (You need not perform any calculation or explain your
answer.)
- Write a sentence interpreting what this interval means (as if this
were a random sample).
- Suppose you want to estimate the proportion of American college
students who favor abolishing the penny.
- In order to estimate this proportion to within ± .10 with 92%
confidence, how many
students would you need to sample? (Supply your own guess concerning the
sample
proportion in determining the necessary sample size; identify this guess
as such.)
You need not perform any calculation or explain your answer in (b), (c),
and (d) below.
- If you want to estimate this proportion to within ± .05 with 92%
confidence, would
you need to sample more or fewer students than in (a)?
- If you want to estimate this proportion to within ± .02 with 95%
confidence, would you
need to sample more or fewer students than in (a)?
- Explain how your answer to (a) would have differed if you wanted to
estimate the
proportion of all Pennsylvanian college students who favor
abolishing the
penny to within ± .10 with 92% confidence.
- Do not perform any calculations to answer the following. Provide a
one-sentence explanation of your reasoning in each case.
- Three researchers Alex, Bob, and Chuck independently select random
samples from the
same population. The sample sizes are 4000 for Alex, 1000 for Bob, and
250 for Chuck.
Each researcher constructs a 95% confidence interval for from his
data. The half-widths of the three intervals are .015, .031, and .062.
Match each half-
width with its researcher.
- Two researchers Donna and Eileen each select random samples of size
1000 from
different populations and construct 95% confidence intervals for .
The half-width of Donna's interval is .030 and the half-width of Eileen's
is .025. Given
that the sample proportions were =.20 and =.40, match each researcher with her sample proportion.
- A researcher Fran selects 100 subjects at random from a population,
observes 50
successes, and calculates three confidence intervals. The confidence
levels are 90%, 95%,
and 99%, and the intervals are (.402,.598), (.371,.629), and (.418,.582).
Match each
interval with its confidence level.
- Two researchers George and Henry work together to study a simple
random sample of
subjects from a population, and they find that the sample proportion is
=.60. When they construct a confidence interval based on
this sample
proportion, George comes up with (.532,.668) while Henry gets
(.552,.688). Indicate
which interval has to be wrong.
- Suppose that weights of bags of potato chips coming from a factory
follow a normal
distribution with mean 12.9 ounces and standard deviation .7 ounces.
- What proportion of bags weigh more than 12 ounces?
- Determine the weight such that 12.5% of the bags weigh more than that
weight.
- If the manufacturer wants to keep the mean at 12.9 ounces but adjust
the standard
deviation so that only 1% of the bags weigh less than 12 ounces, how small
does he/she
need to make that standard deviation?
- Consider again the question of whether the home team wins more than
half of its games
in the National Basketball Association. Suppose that you study a simple
random sample of
80 professional basketball games and find that 52 of them are won by the
home team.
- Is 65% (52 / 80) a parameter or a statistic? Explain.
- Assuming that there is no home court advantage and that the home team
therefore wins
50% of its games in the long run, determine the probability that the home
team would win
65% or more of its games in a simple random sample of 80 games.
- Does the sample information (that 52 of a random sample of 80 games
are won by the
home team) provide strong evidence that the home team wins more than half
of its games in
the long run? Explain.
Math 121
Spring 1995
Exam 3
Please write in the blue books provided. Show the details of your
calculations. You may use a calculator, your Activity Guide
(including the table of standard normal probabilities), and your homework
solutions on this exam. The first question is worth 25 points and the
rest are worth 15 points each.
- A student wanted to assess whether her dog Muffin tends to chase one
of her balls more often than the other. She rolled both a blue ball and a
red ball at the same time and observed which ball Muffin chose to chase.
Repeating this process a total of 96 times, the student found that Muffin
chased the blue ball 57 times and the red ball 39 times.
- In what proportion of the 96 tosses did Muffin chase the blue ball?
- Is this number from a) a parameter or a statistic? Explain.
- The student performed a significance test of : =.5 vs : .5.
Write a sentence specifying what the symbol represents in this context.
- Calculate the test statistic.
- Determine the p-value of the test.
- Write a sentence explaining what the p-value means in this context.
- Would you reject the null hypothesis at the .10 significance level?
At the .05 level? At the .01 level?
- Indicate the smallest significance level at
which you would reject the null hypothesis.
- Write a one-sentence conclusion to the student summarizing what the
data reveal about whether her dog Muffin tends to chase one of her balls
more often than the other.
- An article appearing in the October 4, 1994 issue of The
Harrisburg Evening-News reported that Judge Lance Ito (who is trying
the O.J. Simpson murder case) had received 812 letters from around the
country on the subject of whether to ban cameras from the courtroom. Of
these 812 letters, 800 expressed the opinion that cameras should be
banned.
- Use this sample information to conduct a test of significance of
whether more than 95% of all American adults feel that cameras should be
banned from the courtroom.
- Is the test result statistically significant at the .01 level?
- List the assumptions required for the significance test procedure to
be valid in this situation. Comment on whether the assumptions seem to be
satisfied.
- In a study to assess whether aspirin reduces the risk of a pregnant
woman developing hypertension, 34 pregnant women were randomly assigned to
receive a low dosage of aspirin every day while 31 pregnant women received
a placebo every day. Of those in the aspirin group 4 developed
hypertension during their pregnancy, compared to 11 of those in the
placebo group.
- Is this study a controlled experiment or an observational study?
Explain.
- Identify the explanatory variable in this study.
- Identify the response variable in this study.
- Explain what double-blindness means in the context of this study.
Also indicate why it should be used in this study.
- In a 1984 survey of licensed drivers in Wisconsin, 264 of 1140 women
and 214 of 1200 men said that they did not drink alcohol. Conduct the
appropriate test of significance to assess whether these sample data
provide evidence that Wisconsin women abstain from drinking alcohol at a
higher rate than Wisconsin men. Be sure to:
- specify the null and alternative hypotheses in both symbols and in
words,
- calculate the test statistic,
- determine the p-value, and
- write a one-sentence conclusion about the question of interest.
- A newspaper account of a medical study claimed that the daughters of
women who smoked during pregnancy are more likely to smoke themselves.
The study surveyed children, asking them if they had smoked in the last
year and then asking the mother if she had smoked during pregnancy. Only
4% of the daughters of mothers who did not smoke during pregnancy had
smoked in the past year, compared to 26% of girls whose mothers had smoked
during pregnancy.
- Is this study a controlled experiment or an observational study?
Explain.
- What further information do you need to determine if this difference
in sample proportions is statistically significant?
- Describe a scenario in which you suspect that this difference in
sample proportions would be statistically significant.
- Even if the difference in sample proportions is statistically
significant, does the study establish that the pregnant mother's smoking
caused the daughter's tendency to smoke? Explain.
- "The underlying principle of all statistical inference techniques is
that one uses sample statistics to learn something (i.e., to
infer something) about population parameters ." Convince me
that you understand this statement by writing a short paragraph describing
a situation in which you might use a sample statistic to infer something
about a population parameter. Clearly identify the sample, population,
statistic, and parameter in your example. Be as specific as possible. Do
not use any example which appears in the Activity Guide .
Math 121
Exam 1
February 29, 1996
Please write in the blue books provided. When calculations are asked for,
show the details of your work. When interpretations or explanations are
called for, be clear and concise. You may use a calculator but may not
use Minitab on any part of the exam. Please note the point value on each
problem and budget your time accordingly.
- (15 points) The following table lists the running times (in minutes)
of the videotape versions of 22 movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock:
film | time |
The Birds | 119 |
Dial M for Murder | 105
|
Family Plot | 120 |
Foregin Correspondent | 120
|
Frenzy | 116 |
I Confess | 108 |
The Man Who Knew Too Much |
120 |
Marnie | 130 |
North by Northwest | 136
|
Notorious | 103 |
The Paradise Cane | 116
|
Psycho | 108 |
Rear Window | 113 |
Rebecca | 132 |
Rope | 81 |
Shadow of a Doubt | 108 |
Spellbound | 111 |
Strangers on a Train | 101
|
To Catch a Thief | 103 |
Topaz | 126 |
Under Capricorn | 117 |
Vertigo | 128 |
The following stemplot displays the distribution of these running times:
- Calculate the median of these running times.
- The lower quartile is 108 minutes, and the upper quartile is 120
minutes. Use this information to test for outliers and to construct a
modified boxplot of the running times.
- (20 points) The following table lists the average temperature of a
month and the amount of my electricity bill for that month:
month | temp | bill | | month | temp | bill |
Apr-91 | 51 | $41.69 | | Jun-92 | 66 | $40.89 |
May-91 | 61 | $42.64 | | Jul-92 | 72 | $40.89 |
Jun-91 | 74 | $36.62 | | Aug-92 | 72 | $41.39 |
Jul-91 | 77 | $40.70 | | Sep-92 | 70 | $38.31 |
Aug-91 | 78 | $38.49 | | Oct-92 | * | * |
Sep-91 | 74 | $37.88 | | Nov-92 | 45 | $43.82 |
Oct-91 | 59 | $35.94 | | Dec-92 | 39 | $44.41 |
Nov-91 | 48 | $39.34 | | Jan-93 | 35 | $46.24 |
Dec-91 | 44 | $49.66 | | Feb-93 | * | * |
Jan-92 | 34 | $55.49 | | Mar-93 | 30 | $50.80 |
Feb-92 | 32 | $47.81 | | Apr-93 | 49 | $47.64 |
Mar-92 | 41 | $44.43 | | May-93 | * | * |
Apr-92 | 43 | $48.87 | | Jun-93 |
68 | $38.70 |
May-92 | 57 | $39.48 | | Jul-93 | 78
| $47.47 |
The following scatterplot displys these data. The least squares line is
drawn on the scatterplot; the equation of this line is: bill = 55.1 -
0.214 avg temp.
- Estimate the value of the correlation coefficient between electricity
bill and average temperature.
- What would the least squares line predict for the elecricity bill of
a month with an average temperature of 60 degrees?
- Without doing the calculations, identify which month has the largest
(in absolute value) residual.
- Which month has the smallest fitted value?
- (15 points) The following data address the question of whether
percentages of women physicians are changing with time. The table
classifies physicians according to their gender and age group.
| under 35 | 35-44
| 45-54 | 55-64 | total |
male | 93,287 | 153,921 | 110,790 | 80,288 | 438,286 |
female | 40,431 | 44,336 | 18,026 | 7,224 | 110,017 |
total | 133,718 | 198,257 | 128,816 | 87,512 | 548,303 |
- What proportion of these physicians are women?
- What proportion of those physicians under age 35 are women?
- Consider the following segmented bar graph. Comment on whether it
reveals any connection between gender and age group. Suggest a plausible
explanation for your finding.
- (10 points) The following table tallies the amounts of 111
withdrawals from an automated teller machine. For example, 17 withdrawals
were for the amount of $20 and 3 were for the amount of $50; no
withdrawals were made of $40. The total amount withdrawn is $12,180.
Calculate the median and the mode of these withdrawal amounts.
amount | $20 | $50 | $60 | $100
| $120 | $140 | $150 | $160 |
$200 | $240 | $250 |
tally | 17 | 3 | 7 | 37 |
3 | 8 | 16
| 10 | 8 | 1 | 1 |
- (20 points) The following boxplots display the distributions of the
1993 governor's salaries according to the state's geographic region of the
country. Region 1 is the Northeast, 2 the Midwest, 3 the South, and 4 the
West.
- Which region has the state with the highest governor's salary?
- Which region has the state with the highest median governor's salary?
- Which region has the state with the smallest inter-quartile range of
governor's salaries?
- Estimate the inter-quartile range of the governor's salaries for the
Southern states.
- Estimate the median governor's salary for the Northeatern states.
- (10 points)
- Create a set of ten hypothetical exam scores for which the mean is
less than 90% of the scores.
- Explain how it could happen that if one person moves from city A to
city B, it is possible for the average (mean) IQ in both cities to
increase.
- (10 points) Suppose that 80 of 100 male applicants to a graduate
school are accepted, while 60 of 100 female applicants are accepted.
Breaking down the applications into the school's two separate programs
reveals:
Program A:
72 males accepted out of 80 male applicants
19 females accepted out of 20 female applicants
Program B:
8 males accepted out of 20 male applicants
41 females accepted out of 80 female applicants
Explain why it happens in this example that although each program accepts
a higher proportion of females than males, the school as a whole accepts a
higher proportion of males than females. (You need not perform the
calculations to verify this statement.)
Math 121
Spring 1996
Exam 2
Please write in the blue books provided. Show the details of your
calculations. You may use a calculator, your Activity Guide (including
the table of standard normal probabilities), and your homework solutions
on this exam. Notice that even though many questions contains multiple
parts, you can answer later parts whether or not you correctly answer
earlier parts. The first two questions are worth 20 points each, and the
last four questions are worth 15 points each.
- In a recent study of a sample of 2101 Vietnam veterans, researchers
found that 777 had been divorced at least once.
- Assuming that these veterans were a simple random sample from the
population of all Vietnam veterans, calculate a 90% confidence interval
for the proportion of the population who have been divorced at least once.
- Would the interval have been wider, narrower, or the same width if
4101 veterans had been sampled? Explain your answer without performing
the calculation.
- Can you be sure that your interval contains the sample proportion of
Vietnam veterans who had been divorced at least once? Explain briefly.
- Can you be sure that your interval contains the population proportion
of Vietnam veterans who had been divorced at least once? Explain briefly.
- Suppose that weights of bags of potato chips coming from a factory
follow a normal distribution with mean 12.5 ounces and standard deviation
.3 ounces.
- What proportion of bags weigh more than 12 ounces?
- Determine the weight such that 33% of the bags weigh more than that
weight.
- Do not perform any calculations to answer the following. Provide a
one-sentence explanation of your reasoning
in each case.
- Three researchers Alex, Bob, and Chuck independently select random
samples from the same population. The sample sizes are 1000 for Alex,
4000 for Bob, and 250 for Chuck. Each researcher constructs a 95%
confidence interval for from his data. The
half-widths of the three intervals are .015, .031, and .062. Match each
half-width with its researcher.
- Two researchers Donna and Eileen work together to study a simple
random sample of subjects from a population, and they find that the sample
proportion is =.60. When they construct a confidence
interval based on this sample proportion, Donna comes up with (.532,.668)
while Eileen gets (.552,.688). Indicate which interval has to be wrong.
- A researcher Fran selects 100 subjects at random from a population,
observes 50 successes, and calculates three confidence intervals. The
confidence levels are 90%, 95%, and 99%, and the intervals are
(.402,.598), (.371,.629), and (.418,.582). Match each interval with its
confidence level.
- Consider a true/false test of 25 questions on which a student
guesses randomly at each question. The following histogram presents the
results of a simulation of 10,000 such true/false tests. For example, the
student got 4 correct on 2 of the 10,000 tests, the student got 5 correct
on 15 of the 10,000 tests, the student got 6 correct on 52 of the 10,000
tests, and so on.
- On what percentage of the 10,000 simulated tests did the student get
7 or fewer correct?
- On what percentage of the 10,000 simulated tests did the student get
between 11 and 14 (including both 11 and 14) of the 25 questions correct?
- What is the smallest number such that the student got that many or
more correct on less than 6% of the 10,000 simulated tests?
- Suppose you want to estimate the proportion of American college
students who favor abolishing the penny.
- In order to estimate this proportion to within ± .05 with 99%
confidence, how many students would you need to sample? (Supply your own
guess concerning the sample proportion in determining the necessary sample
size; identify this guess as such.)
- If you want to estimate this proportion to within ± .08 with 96%
confidence, would you need to sample more or fewer students than in (a)?
Explain briefly without performing the calculation.
- Suppose that 80% of all American college students send a card to
their mother on Mother's Day. Suppose further that you plan to select a
simple random sample of 400 American college students and to determine the
proportion of them who send a card to their mother on Mother's Day.
- Is 80% a parameter or a statistic? Explain briefly.
- Determine the probability that less than three-fourths of the
students sampled send a card to their mother on Mother's Day.
Math 121
Spring 1996
Exam 3
Please write in the blue books provided. Show the details of your
calculations. You may use a calculator, your book (including the table of
standard normal probabilities and the t -table), and your homework
solutions on this exam.
- (25 pts.) A student wanted to assess whether her dog Muffin tends
to chase one of her balls more often than the other. She rolled both a
blue ball and a red ball at the same time and observed which ball Muffin
chose to chase. Repeating this process a total of 96 times, the student
found that Muffin chased the blue ball 52 times and the red ball 44 times.
- In what proportion of the 96 tosses did Muffin chase the blue ball?
- Is this number from a) a parameter or a statistic? Explain.
- The student performed a significance test of :=.5 vs :.5. Write
a sentence specifying what the symbol represents in
this context.
- Calculate the test statistic.
- Determine the p-value of the test.
- Would you reject the null hypothesis at the .10 significance level?
- Indicate the smallest significance level &181; at which you would
reject the null hypothesis.
- Write a one-sentence conclusion to the student summarizing what the
data reveal about whether her dog Muffin tends to chase one of her balls
more often than the other.
- (20 pts.) Many studies have shown that high school students who
study a foreign language tend to score higher on the Verbal portion of the
Scholastic Aptitude Examination than high school students who do not study
a foreign language.
- Are such studies observational studies or controlled experiments?
Explain.
- Identify the explanatory variable in these studies. Indicate whether
it is a categorical or measurement variable. If it is categorical,
indicate whether it is also binary.
- Identify the response variable in these studies. Indicate whether it
is a categorical or measurement variable. If it is categorical, indicate
whether it is also binary.
- Can one reasonably conclude from these studies that studying a
foreign language causes students to score higher on the Verbal SAT exam?
If not, suggest a likely alternative explanation for the finding.
- (15 pts.) The following lists the word lengths (numbers of letters in
the words) for a sample of 26 words from Workshop Statistics :
10 | 2 | 3 | 7 | 2 |
9 | 4 | 4
| 2 | 1 | 7 | 5 | 2 |
5 | 4 | 5
| 2 | 2 | 9 | 4 | 2 |
5 | 2 | 3
| 4 | 4 |
The mean of these word lengths is 4.19, and the standard deviation is 2.45.
- Form a 90% confidence interval for µ, the mean word length among
all words in Workshop Statistics .
- If the sample size were larger (and the sample mean and standard
deviation were the same), how would this confidence interval change?
- If the sample mean were larger (and the sample size and standard
deviation were the same), how would this confidence interval change?
- A 99% confidence interval for µ turns out to be (2.853, 5.532).
What proportion of the 26 words sampled have lengths falling within this
interval? Would this answer usually be about 99%? Explain.
- (15 pts.) Suppose that you want to study the question of college
students' having their own credit cards, so you take a random sample of
50,000 college students from around the country. Suppose you find that
24,643 of these students have their own credit card.
- Does this sample information provide strong evidence that less than
half of all American college students have their own credit card? Support
your answer with an appropriate test of significance. Provide a one- or
two-sentence conclusion.
- Does this sample information provide evidence that the proportion of
all American college students who have their own credit card is very much
less than one-half? Support your answer with an appropriate confidence
interval. Provide a one- or two-sentence conclusion.
- (15 pts.) Suppose that 90 of 100 patients who enter hospital A with
a particular ailment recover, while 160 of 200 patients who enter hospital
B with the same ailment recover. Does this sample information provide
strong evidence that hospital A's recovery rate for the disease is
significantly higher (at the .05 level) than hospital B's recovery rate?
Perform the appropriate test of significance to justify your answer, and
provide a one- or two-sentence conclusion.
- (10 pts.) "The underlying principle of all statistical inference
techniques is that one uses sample statistics
to learn something (i.e., to infer
something) about population parameters ."
Convince me that you understand this statement by writing a short
paragraph describing a situation in which you might use a sample statistic
to infer something about a population parameter. Clearly identify the
sample, population, statistic, and parameter in your example. Be as
specific as possible, and do not use any example which appears in
Workshop Statistics .