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Sheet 4
Question 1
An exam coordinator sampled 20 professors and recorded the
number of days that each one needed to submit his or her exam
grades. The results are
10 6 5 2 6 4 9 13 10 12 7 4 9 13 15 8 11
12 4 0
a. Compute the mean, median, and mode.
b. Briefly describe what each statistic tells you.
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Solution
a.

x
x i

10  6  5  2  6  4  9  13  10  12  7  4  9  13  15  8  11  12  4  0
n 20
160
  8 days
20

Ordered data: 0, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 12, 12, 13, 13,

15; Median = 8.5 days
Mode = 4 days
b. The mean number of days to submit grades is 8 days, the median is
8.5 days (Half the group took less than 8.5 days to submit their
grades), and the mode is 4 days (the biggest number of professors in
the group took 4 days to submit their grades).
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Question 2
Given the following Macroeconomics exam grades for 6 students

81 75 66 16 84 96
a. Calculate the best central measure for the above data, justify your
choice and comment on the results.

b. Based on your answer in (a), Is the above data symmetric or

skewed? Justify your answer.

c. If the outlier is removed what would be the best central measure to

represent the data. Justify your choice and comment on the results.

d. What is the mode for the above data? And comment on it. Is it
reliable? and why?

e. What do you conclude from the values of mean, median and mode?
Does your answer in (e) match your answer in (b)?
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Solution

A. Since there is an outlier which is (16). Therefore, the best central measure is the
median.
Step 1: put data in order: (smallest Largest)
16, 66, 75, 81, 84, 96.

Step 2: location of median: (even sample size)- 2 locations

n/2=6/2=3rd n/2+1=6/2+1= 4th

Step 3: value of median: 75+81/2=78 marks

Comment: The median mark is equal to 78 which represents the value at 50%
distance of the ordered dataset (Half of the students got a mark that is below
78 and the other half got a mark above 78).

B. Since the data contains an outlier which is (16). Therefore, the dataset is negatively
skewed.

C. If the outlier is removed that doesn’t mean that the dataset is symmetric. As a
result of that, we have to check the skewness first by comparing both the mean and
the median.
 Mean (x̅)= 81+75+66+84+96/5= 80.4 marks
Comment: The mean mark is equal to 80.4 which represents the value at the
Centre of the data where the majority of observations are around.
 Median after removing outlier:
Step 1: put data in order: (smallest Largest)
66, 75, 81, 84, 96.
Step 2: location of median: (odd sample size)- 1 location
n+1/2=6/2=3rd

Step 3: value of median: 81 marks

Comment: The median mark is equal to 81 which represent the value
at 50% distance of the ordered dataset.
**Since the value of the mean (80.4) is relatively close to the value of the
median (81). Therefore, we assume that the dataset is symmetric.
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And as a result of that, the best central measure is the mean.

D. - Since all observations are repeated only once & there is no most repeated
value in the sample. Therefore, there is no mode.
- It is not reliable because it depends on the frequency of the table. It is not
preferable to use it with the quantitative continuous data.

E. Median=78 marks
Mean (x̅)= 81+75+66+84+96+16/6= 69.67 marks
Mean < Median
69.67 78
**Since the value of the mean (69.67) is less than the value of the median (78).
Therefore, the dataset is negatively skewed.