Review questions for Exam 1

1. What is a statistic?

A number based on information taken from a sample.

2. Why do we gather statistics?

Ultimately, to ease decision making. Specifically, to estimate parameters.

3. Whats the difference between a statistic and a parameter?

Parameters describe populations, and statistics are gathered from samples of a population.

4. What makes something a population or a sample?

Populations are entirely representative, while samples are partially representative.

5. What is the best estimate for the parameter?

A statistic based on a representative sample.

6. Consider the following: I wanted to know the average number of hours people in los angeles
sleep in a week.

a. What is the parameter of interest?

The average.

b. What is the population of interest?

People in los angeles.

c. What is the variable of interest?

Hours of sleep in a week.

d. What is the parameter value?

It is unknown (Averages are oft-denoted with )

e. What kind of variable do we have, qualitative or quantitative?

Quantitative.

7. If I took a sample and only asked students at CSULA, what kind of population might the sample
represent?

Depending on the statistic, it might be a good sample for college students or people studying at CSULA.
Its less likely to be an effective sample for everyone in LA or the US.

8. Whats the difference between qualitative and quantitative?

Qualitative variables are descriptive, while quantitative variables encode numerical values where the
value is numerically meaningful (e.g. football jersey numbers are not meaningful numerically, so they are
not quantitative).

9. What is the difference between Discrete and Continuous?

Discrete values have gaps, while continuous values can be any value in the range.

10. Examples of discrete or continuous?

Height = Continuous

Age = Can be both

Number of hairs = Discrete

11. Someone asks you what your favorite color is what kind of data is that?
a. Nominal
b. Ordinal
c. Interval
d. Ratio
12. What is a frequency?

It is how often something occurs.

13. What does mutually exclusive mean?

It means two things cannot happen simultaneously.

14. Examples?

Majors in Econ or CIS are NOT mutually exclusive. A dual major is possible.

Majors in Finance and Accounting are mutually exclusive. A dual major is not possible.

In the US, being old enough to legally purchase alcohol but not old enough to buy cigarettes are mutually
exclusive (not a possible state).

15. What is a class?

It is a category.

16. What is a class frequency?

It tells us how many members/observations we have in each class.

17. What is an observation?

A member of the sample (e.g. 20 people in sample = 20 observations).

18. How do you find the relative frequency of something?

Take the frequency of it and divide by total frequency.

19. Which way does the horizontal axis go?

Left/right

20. Which way does the vertical axis go?

Up/down

21. What does proportional mean?

Things are matching or drawn to scale.

22. What are pie charts and bar charts used for? (qualitative or quantitative data?)

Qualitative data, generally.

23. What is a distribution?

How the frequencies are spread out.

24. What is the 2 to the k rule?

The first k such that 2^k>n is the number of classes we want In the frequency table.

25. How do we determine the width of a class?

Width = Range/#classes

Range = High - Low

26. What is the point of using graphs and powerpoints?

To make the answers easy and obvious.

27. What is a histogram used for?

Similar to a bar charts but for quantitative data.

28. What is a cumulative frequency diagram?

It graphs the sum of all frequencies before each point.

29. How do you find the cumulative frequency?

Add all the frequencies from the classes before it, including the current one.

30. What is central tendency?

An average. It tells us where the middle of the numbers is.

31. What are the different types of averages?

Arithmetic mean

Geometric mean

Median

Mode
 32. How do we calculate the median?

Order the data by value and find the middle number.

33. How many medians are there?

34. How about mode?

The number(s) that show up the most.

35. How many modes can there be?

Can be none, 1, multiple.

36. What does skewness do to the mean?

Skewness (and extreme values) pull the mean toward it.

If the data is skewered right, then the mean will be to the right of the median.

37. What is geometric mean used for?

Finding the average compound rate.

38. For the gambling winnings/losing of the husband, which measure should we use?

Arithmetic average.

39. Why?

It is representative of his actual gains/losses. All the numbers matter in this case, and a median would
ignore outliers.

40. For earnings of youtubers, which measures is more accurate? Why?

You cannot use the mean to predict your earnings. The outliers are too extreme (winner takes all
system). You are likely to be in the median.

41. For earnings of actors, which measures should we use? Why?

Median or mode is better. Mean will incorporate extreme values.

42. What is dispersion?

How the data spreads out.

43. Why do we measure it?

To get a sense of risk/uncertainty.

44. What is standard deviation?

A common measure of dispersion.

 45. How does it relate to variance?

Variance is std squared.

46. What is range?

Highest value-lowest.

47. What is the empirical rule?

68% of the population is withing 1 SD

95% lies within 2 std

99.7% lies within 3 std

48. What is a normal curve?

It is a specific popular bell curve.

49. Approximately how much of a data should lie within 2 standard deviations from the mean when
looking at a bell curve?

95%

Exam 1 practice part 2

Data set of Sample scores on quiz: 3, 12, 7, 7, 10, 5, 14, 12, 11

50. If we want to make a frequency table, how many classes do we need?

N=9

2^4 = 16>9

K=4

Use 4 classes

51. How wide should the class intervals be?

Width = range/k

Range = max-min

= 14-3

= 11

Width = 11/4 = 2.75

Round up to 3
 52. Which class has the highest frequency?

12-15

53. Which class has the lowest frequency?

3-6,6-9,9-12 are tied.

54. What is the relative frequency of your lowest interval?

2/9

55. Add a cumulative frequency column to your table.

It would go:

2/9

4/9

6/9

9/9

56. Draw a histogram of your frequency distribution

Perfect

[]

[] [] [] []

[] [] [] []

3-6 6-9 9-12 12-15

57. What is the mean?

58. What is the median?

10

59. Mode?

7 and 12

60. Range?

3-14

61. Variance?

13.5

62. Standard Deviation?

3.7

63. Construct a dot plot for this data

64. What is our 60th percentile?

Lp = (n+1) * P/100

N=9

P = 60

(9+1) * 6/10

=10*.6 = 6

6 = Location

65. Construct a boxplot for the data

66. Compute Pearsons Skewness coefficient

SK = 3(xbar-median)/s

Xbar = 9

Median = 10

S = 3.67

3*(9-10)/3.67

=-.81

67. Is our data skewed? In which direction?

It is slightly skewed left. Skewness runs from -3 to +3.

68. What is a scatter diagram used for?

It shows linear correlation between multiple variables.

69. In general, if we do not know how normal a distribution may be, how much of our data would
fall within 2 standard deviations?

70. If we DO know a distribution is normal, how much of our data fall within 2 standard deviations?
 About %95

These are enrollment numbers for CSULA back in the 2005-2006 year. It is a contingency table.

Description Men Women

Total number of full-time undergraduate students: 3,913 6,542
Total number of part-time undergraduate students: 1,556 2,410
Total number of full-time graduate students: 802 1,557
Total number of part-time graduate students: 1,364 2,393
71. What percent of the CSULA population during this year was full-time status, regardless of
gender?

Portion/Total

72. What percent of our graduate students during that year, regardless of their enrollment status
(full-time/part-time) is female?

See 71
Given population scores of 15, 12, 13, 10, 10

73. If we want to make a frequency table, how many classes do we need?

74. How wide should the class intervals be?

75. Which class has the highest frequency?

76. Which class has the lowest frequency?

77. What is the relative frequency of your lowest interval?

78. Add a cumulative frequency column to your table.

79. Draw a histogram of your frequency distribution

80. What is the mean?

81. What is the median?

82. Mode?

83. Range?

84. Variance?

85. Standard Deviation?

86. Construct a dot plot for this data

 87. What is the 33.33th percentile?

88. Construct a boxplot for the data

89. Compute Pearsons Skewness coefficient

90. Is our data skewed? In which direction?

instructor part-
s time full-time
male 336 230
female 276 220
For the contingency table above:

91. What percent of the faculty was part-time?

92. What percent of the faculty was male?

93. What percent of the faculty was part-time and female?