Practice Problems 1

1. Below is a sample of twelve quoted prices for a new paperback copy of

our textbook (Statistics for Business and Economics, 8th Edition) through
the Amazon.co.uk marketplace (prices quoted as on 8 October 2013, 9:27pm
GMT, shipping fees included.)

£50.70 £50.79 £51.14 £55.79 £56.69 £58.77

£59.64 £60.19 £61.13 £66.40 £80.42 £92.79

(a) Find the mean and median prices for NCT8 in the list above.
(b) Find the (sample) standard deviation of prices and the coefficient of
variation for NCT8 in the list above.
(c) If you remove the £80.42 observation, the range is unchanged. What
happens to the sample standard deviation? The median?
2. Page 73 of NCT gives a “shortcut” formula for the sample variance,
namely: Pn 2 Pn 2
2
i xi − nx x n
2
s = = i i − x2
n−1 n−1 n−1
instead of Pn
2 (xi − x)2
s = i .
n−1
Work out how to obtain the shortcut formula from the above definition. Dis-
play the steps.

3. Attempt question 2 of the empirical project.

4. From Lecture Notes 1 slides. A sample of n = 100 flights was taken at an

airport to study the problem of air traffic delays.

1
 Minutes Late
Class Rel. Freq. (fi /n) Rel. Cum. Freq. mi
0-10 0.29 0.29 5
10-20 0.23 0.52 15
20-30 0.17 0.69 25
30-40 0.14 0.83 35
40-50 0.11 0.94 45
50-60 0.06 1 55

Estimate the sample mean, variance and standard deviation.