Stat 151 Practice Midterm 1

LAST NAME: ___________________ FIRST NAME: ___________________________

STUDENT ID: ___________________ STAT 151 SECTION: ______________________

Instructions:
1) Personal items must be placed aside prior to the start of the exam.
2) All portable electronic devices must be turned off, including cell phones, pagers, etc.
3) No communications with other students are allowed.
4) The exam is closed book.
5) It has 30 multiple choice questions (each worth 1 mark).
6) Make sure you put your last name (the same one that is illustrated on your OneCard), first
name (the same one that is illustrated on your OneCard), student ID #, and signature on the
front page of the exam booklet. Also, make sure you use ONLY PENCIL to mark your name,
student ID #, and your exam version number on the scantron sheet.
7) Choose only the best answer for each question.
8) Put all answers on the scantron by shading the letter A, B, C, D, or E corresponding to
your chosen answer. Make sure your answers are clearly marked by pencil. Otherwise,
no marks will be given.
9) No credit will be given for anything written in the examination booklet. If you change an
answer on the scantron, be sure that you erase your first mark completely; then blacken the
circle of the answer choice you prefer. Your score will be based on the number of questions
you answer correctly. No credit will be given for omitted answers; no credit will be lost for
wrong answers.
10) You must mark all your answers on the answer sheet during the allotted time. No additional
time will be allowed at the end of the session for this purpose.
11) You must return your scantron, exam booklet, z-table, and the formula sheet to the instructor
when you finish the exam.
12) Copying questions or answers of this exam to take from the exam room is prohibited.
13) You are permitted to use an APPROVED nonprogrammable calculator with the Faculty of
Science gold sticker and the formula sheet provided. Any calculators without the gold sticker
will be confiscated (only to be returned at the end of the examination) and, as such, you will be
required to do the exam without a calculator.
14) You are not permitted to share a calculator.
15) Total marks of this exam: 30
16) You have 1 hour and 30 minutes.

SIGNATURE: _________________________________

Page 1 of 12
 Stat 151 Practice Midterm 1
1. A football league tests players for performance enhancing drugs. Officials put all players
together and test randomly chosen players. What kind of sample is this?
A) Simple random sample
B) Stratified random sample
C) Voluntary response sample
D) Convenience sample
E) Systematic sample

2. A recent study examined the medical records of hospital patients and found that the incidence
of Hepatitis C was twice as high among people who had tattoos or piercings than among
people who do not have tattoos or piercings.
A) This is an observational study and causal inferences can be obtained from this study.
B) This is an observational study and causal inferences cannot be obtained from this study.
C) This is an experiment and causal inferences can be obtained from this study.
D) This is an experiment and causal inferences cannot be obtained from this study.
E) This is neither an observational study nor an experiment.

3. A consumer reports article about 116 HDTVs lists each set’s manufacturer (10 of them), cost
(in $), screen size (25”, 45”, and 60”), type (LCD or plasma), and overall performance score
(0-100). Identify the “who”.
A) HDTV
B) Manufacturer
C) Screen size
D) Type
E) Performance score

4. Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A) An example of a parameter is s2.
B) An example of a statistic is µ.
C) Age can be considered as both a continuous and discrete variable.
D) The process of using statistical methods to draw conclusions about a population is called
descriptive statistics.
E) The distribution for charts using categorical (qualitative) can be commented on with regard
to skewness provided the chart is sorted alphabetically.

Page 2 of 12
 Stat 151 Practice Midterm 1
5. A computer network manager wants to test the reliability of some new and expensive fiber-
optic Ethernet cables that the computer department just received. The computer department
received 8 boxes containing 40 cables each. The manager does not have the time to test every
cable in each box. The manager will choose one box at random and test 8 cables chosen
randomly within that box. What is the population?
A) The one box of 40 cables chosen at random from the 8 boxes.
B) The entire shipment of 8 boxes.
C) The entire shipment of 320 cables.
D) The 8 cables chosen randomly for testing.
E) The proportion of reliable cables.

6. A sample was taken of the verbal GRE scores of 20 applicants to graduate school at a large
midwestern university. Below are the scores. For convenience, the data are ordered.
280 310 340 350 370 410 420 420 420 470
490 510 520 520 600 610 670 720 750 770
The first quartile for the applicant scores is
A) 340
B) 390
C) 410
D) 480
E) 605

7. The following histogram represents the distribution of number of students accepted among 25
business schools in 1997. In each class interval, the left endpoint is included but not the right.

What percent of the schools have accepted less than 20 students?

A) 3% B) 16% C) 4% D) 12% E) 8%

Page 3 of 12
 Stat 151 Practice Midterm 1
11. A random variable, Y, has a mean of 50 and a variance of 25. What is the variance of 2Y+3?
A) 10
B) 53
C) 100
D) 25
E) 103

12. In a certain lottery, you have a 70% chance of winning $5, a 25% chance of winning $10, and a
5% chance of winning $100. What is the expected value for your winnings?
A) 38
B) 33
C) 11
D) 50
E) 75

13. In a class, 66% of the students are girls, 44% of the girls like comics, and 16% of the boys like
comics. What is the probability that a student selected at random likes comics?
A) 0.07
B) 0.22
C) 0.34
D) 0.60
E) 0.66

14. Suppose in a statistic class, there are 100 students that had the following frequency distribution
of blood type
Blood Type A B AB O
Frequency 25 30 35 10
If a randomly selected student does NOT have blood type O, what is the probability that the
student has blood type AB?
A) 0.25
B) 0.35
C) 0.39
D) 0.56
E) 0.10

Page 5 of 12
 Stat 151 Practice Midterm 1
15. Stacy is taking an English class and a History class. Consider the following events:
E = {get an A in English}
H = {get an A in History}
Assume P(E) = 0.56, P(H) = 0.38, and P(E and H) = 0.29.

What is the probability that Stacy gets at least one A in her two classes?
A) 0.29
B) 0.65
C) 0.85
D) 0.94
E) 0.18

16. The table shows whether students in an introductory statistics class like dogs and/or cats.

Like Dogs
Yes No Total
Like Cats Yes 194 21 215
No 70 50 120
Total 264 71 335
Given a randomly chosen student who likes cats, what is the probability for this student to like
dogs as well?
A) 194/215
B) 194/335
C) 194/264
D) 264/335
E) 215/335

17. Refer to the previous question, do “liking dogs” and “liking cats” appear to be independent?
Give the correct reasoning.
A) No, because they are not disjoint.
B) No, because the probability of liking dogs depends on liking cats.
C) No, because the probability of liking dogs does not depend on liking cats.
D) Yes, because they are not disjoint.
E) Yes, because the probability of liking dogs depends on liking cats.

Page 6 of 12
 Stat 151 Practice Midterm 1
18. Suppose that, for any survivor of Oceanic flight 815, the probability of getting off the island
they land on is approximately 42%. If each person’s chances of getting off the island is
independent of the others and we are only concerned with the fate of SIX survivors, what is the
probability of more than 5 getting off the island?
A) 0.0510
B) 0.9945
C) 0.9619
D) 0.0055
E) 0.0131

19. Suppose that the true proportion of people who have heard of the Summit Series of 1972 is a
dismally low 0.09. If a random sample consisted of 300 people, what is the probability of the
sample proportion being less than 0.11?
A) 0.0200
B) 0.1131
C) 0.5080
D) 0.8869
E) 1.2105

20. The year is 1936 and Indiana Jones is trapped in a villain’s death trap. His life randomly
flashes before his eyes and he realizes he’s been in death traps before. In fact, his amazingly
good memory suggests the mean time he spends in death traps is 19.84 minutes with a standard
deviation of 1.3 minutes. From 40 random death traps, what is the probability the sample
mean is greater than 20?
A) 0.2216
B) 0.2177
C) 0.4522
D) 0.7823
E) 0.5478

21. Refer to the previous question, suppose “time spent in death traps” is normally distributed. If
Doctor Jones considers a new random sample of 10 death traps, then the sampling distribution
for the corresponding sample mean
A) is normal with a standard deviation of 0.411.
B) may not be normal because the Central Limit Theorem requires n to exceed 30.
C) is normal with a standard deviation of 1.3.
A) may not be normal with a standard deviation of 0.411.
B) may not be normal with a standard deviation of 1.3.

Page 7 of 12
 Stat 151 Practice Midterm 1
22. Two sections of a class took the same quiz. Section A had 15 students who had a mean score of
80, and Section B had 20 students who had a mean score of 90. Overall, what was the mean
score for all of the students on the quiz?
A) 84.3
B) 85.0
C) 85.7
D) None of these.
E) It cannot be determined.

23. An urn contains 10 red chips, 6 black chips, and 2 blue chips. You are to randomly select 2
chips without replacement. You win the game if both chips are black. What is the probability
that you win?
A) 0.111
B) 0.667
C) 0.098
D) 0.333
E) 0.227

24. Suppose that a Normal model described student scores in a history class. Parker has a
standardized score (z-score) of +2.5. This means that Parker
A) is 2.5 points above average for the class.
B) is 2.5 standard deviations above average for the class.
C) has a standard deviation of 2.5.
D) has a score that is 2.5 times the average for the class.
E) None of the above.

25. Which statement(s) about bias is (are) true?

I. Bias results from random variation and will always be present.
II. Bias results from samples that do not represent the population.
III. Bias is usually reduced when sample size is larger.
A) I only
B) II only
C) III only
D) I and III only
E) II and III only

Page 8 of 12
 Stat 151 Practice Midterm 1

26. A biased coin is twice as likely to turn up tails as heads. The coin is tossed twice. Let X be the
number of heads obtained. Which of the following is the probability distribution of X?

A) x 0 1 2

P(X = x) 1/9 4/9 4/9

B) x 0 1 2

P(X = x) 1/9 5/9 3/9

C) x 0 1 2

P(X = x) 4/9 4/9 1/9

D) x 0 1 2

P(X = x) 4/9 2/9 3/9

E) x 0 1 2

P(X = x) 1/3 1/3 1/3

27. Which of the following statements best describes the Central Limit Theorem?
A) In a sample from a population having a mean µ and a standard deviation σ, the respective
mean and standard deviation of the sampling distribution of the sample mean are
approximately µ and / n .
B) When sampling from a normal population, the sample mean is always normally distributed.
C) If the sample size n is large enough, then the population being sampled can be assumed to
have a normal distribution.
D) If the sample size n is large enough, then the sample is approximately normally distributed.
E) If the sample size n is large enough, then the distribution of the sample mean is approximately
normally distributed.

Page 9 of 12
 Stat 151 Practice Midterm 1
28. A 1998 census recorded that 20% of families in Old Montreal lived below the poverty level.
Assuming the 20% figure is still correct today, and a random sample of 35 families is selected
from this community. Which of the following statement is TRUE about the sampling distribution
of the sample proportion of families who live below the poverty level in the community?
A) It may not be normal with a mean of 0.20 and a standard deviation of 0.0046.
B) It may not be normal with a mean of 0.20 and a standard deviation of 0.0676.
C) It is approximately normal with a mean of 0.20 and a standard deviation of 0.0046.
D) It is approximately normal with a mean of 0.20 and a standard deviation of 0.0676.
E) It is approximately normal with a mean of 0.20 and a standard deviation of 0.0338.

The following question refers to the boxplot output that was discussed in the Lab 1 Instructions.

29. The following is the boxplot on systolic blood pressure by gender:

Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A) The ends of the whiskers identify outliers.
B) The median would be a better measure of the center than the mean for these data.
C) The mean would be a better measure of the center than the median for these data.
D) The female group has an IQR of 75, and the male group has an IQR of 45.
E) The mean is around 130 for each group.

Page 10 of 12
 Stat 151 Practice Midterm 1

The following question refers to the normal Q-Q plot that was discussed in the Lab 2
Instructions.

30. The output for the Q-Q Plot for one of the random samples is shown below:

Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A) All the points on this Q-Q plot does not all touch the straight line, which implies the data
must be skewed with outliers.
B) This Q-Q plot shows the points are reasonably close to a straight line, which implies the
data in this sample are not normal.
C) This Q-Q plot shows the points are reasonably close to a straight line, which implies the
data in this sample are fairly linear.
D) This Q-Q plot shows the points are reasonably close to a straight line, which implies the
data in this sample are fairly normal.
E) We must use a boxplot or histogram to check for normality instead of the Q-Q plot.

Page 11 of 12