Tutorial 3 – Supplementary Questions

Measures of central tendency and spread, sampling variation & standard

error
1. In a report investigating the association between diet and the risk of postmenopausal breast
cancer (Giles G et al. Int J Cancer, 2006) from a cohort of 12,273 women, the distribution of
body mass index and fibre intake were presented as the following:-

Body mass index (BMI; kg/m2): mean = 27.1 kg/m2; standard deviation = 4.8 kg/m2

Fibre intake (g/day): median = 28.9 g/day; inter-quintile range = 21.1, 38.5 g/day

a. Why do you think the authors did not present the mean and standard deviation for fibre
intake?
b. What do you think the inter-quintile range represents?

2. The length of stay in hospital after a certain operation for the entire population of 1,200
patients treated by a clinic was distributed as the following:-

Population mean () = 11.15 days

Population standard deviation () = 5.58 days

Suppose we take one sample of 100 patients, and measure the length of stay for each patient.

The sample mean = 10.0 days

The sample standard deviation, s = 5.0 days

a. Calculate the standard error for the above sample of 100 patients, assuming the
population standard deviation () is unknown?
b. We then take twenty separate random samples, each of 100 patients. For each sample
we calculate the sample mean. The twenty sample means are listed below:-

11.50 11.87 11.05 11.22 10.64

11.62 10.50 10.50 11.05 10.17
10.92 11.35 10.99 10.85 10.71
10.67 10.84 11.53 11.42 11.33

Calculate the sample mean and standard deviation of the above 20 sample means.

c. Which of the parameters (sample standard deviation or standard error) calculated for
the single random sample of 100 patients, is similar to the standard deviation of the
above sample means (calculated from twenty separate random samples, each of 100
patients), and why?