1. Can you find the mean by using a box plot?

The answer is no if one uses the way the box plot is constructed in the book. The line is the median and the mean could lie anywhere, depending on the outliers. 2. Can you infer the skewness (positive or negative) of a distribution using the boxplot: Yes, you can approximate it. If one of the whiskers is longer than the other, then the distribution, most likely, is skewed towards the longer whisker. 3. Sample vs. population mean In the figure I showed, the mean of the sample was larger than the mean of the population. Notice that this is not the rule. The main point of the figure was that the parameters of the sample are usually different from the parameters of the population, because of measurement error. If the sample is good (=representative and large), then the parameters of the sample will approach the parameters of the population. 4. Question 3.56b Intervals that at least contain 75% of all future returns. Because we are not sure about the normality of the distribution, it is better to use the Chebyshevs theorem. The theorem states that for different values of k, with k>1, at least 100(1-1/k2)% of the population lies in the interval [meank*standard deviation]. You want to find 75% of all observations. For fixed annuities: For k=2, at least 100(1-1/22)% = 75% lies in the interval [meank*standard deviation] = [8.312*.54] = [7.23% 9.39%] You want to find 88.89% of all observations. For fixed annuities: For k=3, at least 100(1-1/32)% = 88.89% lies in the interval [meank*standard deviation] = [8.313*.54] = [6.69% 9.39%] 5. Question 3.56c,d,e Here it asks for maximum and minimum values. In reality these can not be accurately estimated by the mean and standard deviation alone. Yet, we know that 99.73 of the population / observations will be somewhere between the range: [mean 3*st.deviations mean + 3 st. deviations]. Thus we can assume that the minimum and maximum values are exactly these: minimum: mean 3*st.deviations; maximum mean + 3*st.deviations.