Individual project - QMB 2301

Dr. Dastan

Instructions:
• The assignment should be submitted via Blackboard. The assignment folder is in the
left sidebar menu in the Blackboard (Below the office hour link).

• You need to explain your work clearly and thoroughly. I will not give credit to assign-
ments containing only the final answer.

• You may use Excel to answer the questions unless you are asked otherwise. If you use
Excel, make sure to mention the commands you used.

• The answers to all questions MUST be in one word or pdf file (My preference is a
pdf). If your answer includes a table or chart in excel, copy an image of your excel
work in your pdf file. You will lose points if you submit multiple files.

• For questions containing an Excel file, you may submit excel sheets with your work
(This is the exception to the rule above).

• Email submission is NOT acceptable. The deadline is the last day of classes.
Late assignments will not be graded.

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Question 1. The economic downturn in 2008-2009 resulted in the loss of jobs and
an increase in delinquent loans for housing. To project where the real estate market was
headed in the coming year, economists studied the relationship between the jobless rate and
the percentage of delinquent loans. The expectation was that if the jobless rate continued
to increase, there would also be an increase in the percentage of delinquent loans. The data
set joblessrate show the jobless rate and the delinquent loan percentage for 27 major real
estate markets.

a. Compute the correlation coefficient. Is there a positive correlation between the jobless
rate and the percentage of delinquent housing loans? What is your interpretation?

b. Show a scatter diagram of the relationship between the jobless rate and the percentage

of delinquent housing loans.

c. Find the city with the median jobless rate?

d. Compute the 56th percentile for the delinquent loans rate. What cities are above and

below that percentile?

Question 2. The Northwest regional manager of Logan Outdoor Equipment Company

has conducted a study to determine how her store managers are allocating their time. A
study was undertaken over three weeks that collected the following data related to the
percentage of time each store manager spent on the tasks of attending required meetings,
preparing business reports, customer interaction, and being idle. The results of the data
collection appear in the data set logan.

a. Create a stacked-bar chart with locations along the vertical axis. Reformat the bar
chart to best display these data by adding axis labels, a chart title, and so on.

b. Create a clustered bar chart with locations along the vertical axis and clusters of tasks.
Reformat the bar chart to display these data by adding axis labels, a chart title, and
the like.

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 c. Create multiple bar charts in which each location becomes a single bar chart showing
the percentage of time spent on tasks. Reformat the charts to best display the data
by adding axis labels, a chart title, and so forth.

d. Which form of bar chart (stacked, clustered, or multiple) is preferable for these data?
Why?

e. What can we infer about the differences among how store managers are allocating their
time at the different locations?

Question 3. The data set webdevelop shows monthly revenue for six different web
development companies.

a. Use Excel to create sparklines for sales at each company.

b. Which companies have generally decreasing revenues over the six months? Which com-
pany has exhibited the most consistent growth over the six months? Which companies
have revenues that are both increasing and decreasing over the six months?

c. Use Excel to create a heat map for the revenue of the six companies. Do you find
the heat map or sparklines to better communicate the trend of revenues over the six
months for each company? Why?

Question 4. Data shows that around 36% of the U.K. population has an O+ blood
type. (Answer this question without using Excel )

a. What is the probability that a randomly selected person has a blood type other than
O+?

b. If three unrelated people in the U.K. are selected randomly, what is the probability
that none of them have O+ blood type?

c. In a situation that we select six unrelated people in the U.K. at random, what is the

probability that:

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 i. At least one has an O+ blood type?

ii. At most, 2 have O+ blood type?

iii. Exactly 5 have O+ blood type?

Question 5. A report shows that online game players, on average, spend 40 minutes on
each session. Suppose that the time the players spend on the games follows an exponential
distribution. (Answer this question without using Excel )

a. Write the exponential distribution function for the time spent by players on a single
session.

b. What is the probability that a player spends between 30 to 50 minutes on a single

session?

c. What is the probability that a player will spend more than 1 hour on a single session?

Question 6. Suppose that height among the adult male population follows a normal
distribution with a mean of 175 cm and a standard deviation of 10 cm. What height must
a man have to be among the top 3 percent tallest adult males?

Question 7. Suppose that flight arrival at El Paso airport follows a Poisson distribution
with the rate of one flight every 5 minutes.

a. What is the expected number of arrivals in 80 minutes?

b. What is the probability of 3 arrivals in 20 minutes?

c. What is the probability of no flight arrivals in a 15-minute period?

Question 8. In lodging a protest, a shareholders’ group claimed that the mean tenure
for a chief executive officer (CEO) was at least nine years. A survey of companies reported in
the Wall Street Journal found a sample mean tenure of x. = 7.27 for CEOs with a standard
deviation of s = 6.38. (Answer this question without using Excel )

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 a. Formulate hypotheses that can be used to challenge the validity of the claim made by
the shareholders’ group.

b. Assume that 85 companies were included in the sample. What is the p-value for your
hypothesis test?

c. At α = 0.01, what is your conclusion?

Question 9. According to the Census Bureau, 2,475,780 people are employed by the
federal government in the United States. Suppose that a random sample of 3,500 of these
federal employees was selected, and the number of sick hours each of these employees took
last year was collected from an electronic personnel database. The data collected in this
survey are provided in the file FedSickHours.

a. What is the sample mean number of sick hours taken by federal employees last year?

b. Using 99% confidence, what is the margin of error?

c. Using the results from parts (a) and (b), develop the 99% confidence interval estimate
of the mean number of sick hours taken by federal employees last year.

Question 10. ABC News reports that 58% of U.S. drivers admit to speeding. Suppose
that new satellite technology can instantly measure the speed of any vehicle on a U.S. road
and determine whether the vehicle is speeding, and this satellite technology was used to take
a sample of 20,000 vehicles at 6:00 p.m. on a recent Tuesday afternoon. Of these 20,000
vehicles, 9,252 were speeding.

a. What is the sample proportion of vehicles on U.S. roads that speed?

b. At 99% confidence level, what is the margin of error?

c. Using the results from parts (a) and (b), develop the 99% confidence interval estimate
of the proportion of vehicles on U.S. roads that speed.

d. What does the confidence interval in part (c) lead you to conclude about the ABC
News report?