MTH220

Timed Online Assignment – January Semester 2021

Statistical Methods and Inference

Thursday, 27 May 2021 1:00 pm – 3:30 pm

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Time allowed: 2.5 hours

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INSTRUCTIONS TO STUDENTS:

1. This Timed Online Assignment (TOA) contains SIX (6) questions and comprises
SEVEN (7) pages (including cover page).

2. You must answer ALL questions.

3. If you have any queries about a question, or believe there is an error in the question,
briefly explain your understanding and assumptions about that question before
attempting it.

4. You MUST submit your answers via Canvas (similar to TMA submission) at the
end time of this TOA (as stated on this cover page). The 15 minutes grace period as
shown on Canvas is strictly meant for technical issues encountered during
submission. Thereafter, you will not be able to submit your answers and you will be
considered as having withdrawn from the course. No appeal will be allowed.

5. You are to include the following particulars in your submission: TOA Course Code,
your Full Name, and SUSS PI Number. Name your submission file as
TOACourseCode_FullName_StudentPI. Use underscore and NOT Space. Example:
TOAXYZ_RaphaelLee_T1923161 (omit D/O, S/O).

6. Your submission should consist of only one file and must not exceed 500MB in size.
The file must be a PDF or Microsoft Word file saved in .doc or .docx format. All
answers are to be typed. Flowcharts and graphs may be scanned or photographed and
embedded in the PDF or Word file provided it does not exceed the file size limit of
500MB.

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TOA – January Semester 2021
7. For answers which cannot be typed and require to be hand-written, ensure that
question number is clearly stated on each page. All uploaded hand written answers
must be clear, readable and complete. Marks will not be awarded for
un-readable or incomplete images.

8. To prevent plagiarism and collusion, your submission will be reviewed by Turnitin.

The Turnitin report will only be made available to the marker and you will not be
able to view it.

9. The University takes plagiarism and collusion seriously, and your Turnitin report will
be examined thoroughly as part of the marking process.

10. Unless otherwise specified, full details of the workings for each question are to be
submitted.

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TOA – January Semester 2021
 
Answer all questions. (Total 100 marks)

Question 1

You are asked to perform some statistical analysis on a particular brand of television.
After doing some research, you realised that the time, 𝑇, it takes for this brand of
television to spoil is uniformly distributed between 0 and 𝑎 inclusive, where 𝑎 is a
positive constant. Answer the following questions and show full details of your workings.

(a) Derive the mean and variance of T.

(3 marks)

(b) Find an approximation to the distribution of the sample mean 𝑇 of a large

random sample (size 𝑛 30) of T.
(5 marks)

(c) For a particular sample of size 50, 𝑡̅ 2.4. Find a 95% confidence interval for
a.
(7 marks)

(d) Assume a = 10, compute the smallest sample size required if we wish to be 95%
confident that the sample mean 𝑇 is within 0.5 of the true mean.
(5 marks)

Question 2

A fair die is tossed 60 times.

(a) Find the distribution of the mean score (average score of the 60 scores).
(10 marks)

(b) Use the distribution in Question 2(a) to compute the probability that the total
score (sum of the 60 scores) is less than or equal to 200. Show full details of your
working and write down any results used.
(10 marks)

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TOA – January Semester 2021
 
Question 3

Foldable bikes have gained popularity during the current Covid-19 pandemic lock-down
in the country. One factor influencing the choice of a foldable bike is the time taken to
completely unfold the bike.

Various regular users of two foldable bike brands were tested and their times (in minutes)
to unfold the bike was recorded as shown in Table Q3.

WellFold: 2, 4, 9, 3, 2
LightStrength: 3, 7, 5, 8, 4, 3

Table Q3

A two-sample t-test is to be carried out to test if there is any difference between the two
brands at 5% significance level.

You may use R to help you perform or check parts of your workings, but all details must
be shown.

(a) What are the assumptions needed to carry out the test?
(2 marks)

(b) State the null and alternative hypotheses.

(1 mark)

(c) Compute the pooled sample variance.

(4 marks)

(d) Determine the value of the test statistic.

(4 marks)

(e) Determine the critical (rejection) region for the test.

(2 marks)

(f) Comment and write out a brief conclusion for the test.
(2 marks)

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TOA – January Semester 2021
 
Quesption 4

Clean Well is a new all-purpose cleaner being test marketed by placing displays in three
different locations within a selected supermarket. The number of 500ml bottles sold in
each location in a week is reported below:

Near the bread 20 15 24 18

Near the beer 12 18 10 15
With other cleaners 25 28 30 32

Table Q4

At 5% significance level, we perform a test to check if there is a difference in the mean

number of bottles sold at the three locations. Displaying all relevant workings, answer
the following questions (You may use R to help you perform or check parts of your
workings, but all details must be shown.):

(a) State the null and alternative hypotheses.

(2 marks)

(b) For each location, compute the mean and standard deviation of the number of
bottles sold.
(4 marks)

(c) Like the sum of squares used for determining the least square regression equation
line, compute SS(treatment) and SS(error) using the values from Question 4 (b)
above.
(4 marks)

(d) Hence develop the ANOVA table.

(7 marks)

(e) What is the decision rule?

(2 marks)

(f) Comment on your conclusion.

(1 mark)

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TOA – January Semester 2021
 
Question 5

A sample of nine flights from Australia Melbourne International Airport and eight from
New Zealand Christchurch International Airport reported the following numbers of no-
shows for the flights.

Melbourne Christchurch Melbourne Christchurch

11 13 20 9
15 14 24 17
10 10 22 21
18 8 25
11 16

Table Q5

(a) At 5% significance level, use a Wilcoxon rank-sum test to test if there are more
no-shows for the flights originating in Melbourne.
(14 marks)

(b) Why would a parametric test like the two-sample t-test be unsuitable in this case?
(1 mark)

Question 6

A marketing manager aims to investigate whether gender can influence the car
preference. The manager compared auto cars and manual cars. To generalize the study,
the manager decides to use a general format to represent the observed frequencies, which
are shown in Table Q6. An appropriate test is carried to perform the analysis.

Male Female Total

Auto Car 𝑎 𝑎 𝑛
Manual 𝑏 𝑏 𝑛
Car
Total 𝑛 𝑛 𝑛

Table Q6

(a) State the null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis.

(2 marks) 

(b) Determine the expected frequencies.

(4 marks) 

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TOA – January Semester 2021
(c) Given that

𝑛 𝑛 𝑛 𝑛 𝑛 𝑛 𝑛 𝑛 𝑎 𝑏 𝑎 𝑏
𝑎 𝑎 𝑏 𝑏 ,
𝑛 𝑛 𝑛 𝑛 𝑛

show that the test statistic can be reduced to

𝜒 .

Show full details of your workings.

(4 marks)

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TOA – January Semester 2021