MGCR 271: Assignment #2

Summer 2023

Due date: May 22, 2022 at 11:59pm. Late submissions will not be accepted

Instructor: Jean-Sebastien Matte

Instructions:

• Please answer all multiple choice questions and submit your answers through myCourses - Quiz -

Assignment 2

• It is recommended that you not open the quiz until you have solved all the questions in the assignment

to avoid any potential technical difficulties

1 Examining Relationships I

1. (4 points) We collected data on 10 houses from Ville-Marie neighborhood. We obtained the following

sample of housing prices, number of bedrooms, and year of construction.

Number of Year of
Price (in thousands $) Neighborhood
bedrooms construction
388 Ville Marie 3 1987
239 Ville Marie 1 1870
548 Ville Marie 2 2016
335 Ville Marie 2 2005
339 Ville Marie 1 2013
289 Ville Marie 2 1998
398.52 Ville Marie 2 2016
343.3 Ville Marie 1 2016
151.8 Ville Marie 1 2016
544 Ville Marie 3 2010

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 (a) (3 points) Complete the following sentence: The price of a house in Ville Marie goes

when the number of bedrooms increases. (Hint: Calculate the coefficient of correlation for the house

prices and the number of bedrooms.)

A. up B. down

(b) (1 point) The correlation coefficient between the house price and the year of construction is -0.4854.

Complete the following sentence: The price of a house in Ville Marie goes as houses get

older.

A. up B. down

2 Examining Relationships II

2. (9 points) Using the entire Montreal housing dataset (that was used in Assignment 1), create a scatter

plot, in which the x-axis represents the living space area (in meters2 ), and the y-axis represents the

price of the house. What does this scatter plot tell you?

(a) (2 points) What relation between between the living space area and the cost of a home can you

conclude from the scatter plot?

A. positive linear B. negative linear

(b) (3 points) Using the Regression tool in Excel (or any other statistical package), perform linear

regression on the data. Use the living space area as the independent variable, and the price as the

dependent variable. What is the equation of the least-squares line?

A. y = −1, 523.4X + 349, 823 B. y = −1, 120.5X + 578, 909 C. y = 1, 719.3X + 292, 892

D. y = 2, 000.4X + 268, 374

(c) (1 point) Based on the regression results, how much would you expect to pay (on average) for a

house that has 80 square meters of living space area in Montreal?

A. $430,436 B. $227,951 C. $428,406 D. $489,269

(d) (1 point) Based on the regression results, how much would you expect to pay (on average) for a

house that has 140 square meters of living space area in Montreal?

A. $136,547 B. $548,430 C. $422,039 D. $533,594

(e) (2 points) Complete the following sentence: The regression line the value of the house

with id= 710673. (Hint: Calculate the residual value for the house with id = 710673)

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 A. under-estimate B. over-estimate

3 Probability Theory I and II

3. (10 points) (a) (3 points) A bag contains 3 green balls, 6 red balls and 10 blue balls.

• I took a ball out of the bag, and it was green.

• Then, after putting the ball back in the bag, I took another ball. It was green again.

What is the probability of this happening?

A. 0.025 B. 0.316 C. 0.158 D. 0.018

(b) (7 points) On a given day, Pierre eats poutine with probability of 0.15. When Pierre eats poutine,

he feels sick with a probability of 0.90. If Pierre doesn’t eat poutine, he feels sick with probability

0.20.

i. (3 points) What is the probability that Pierre will feel sick today?

A. 0.135 B. 0.440 C. 0.305 D. 0.865

ii. (4 points) Pierre is feeling sick after going out. What is the probability that he ate poutine,

conditional on Pierre being sick?

A. 0.135 B. 0.440 C. 0.305 D. 0.865

4. (2 points) A group of researchers studied a sample of 100 McGill students on what superpowers they

would like to have. Here are the results:

Superpower Male Female Total

To fly 21 10 31
To be invisible 15 28 43
To pass through walls 4 19 23
Other 3 0 3
Total 43 57 100

A student is chosen at random.

(a) (1 point) What is the probability the student is male if the student chose “to fly” as their super-

power?

A. 0.389 B. 0.677 C. 0.745 D. 0.9

(b) (1 point) What is the probability the student chose ‘To pass through walls” if the student is female?

A. 0.333 B. 0.45 C. 0.5 D. 0.889

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5. (6 points) The finance department of a particular company has 15 employees, 6 of whom have MBA

degrees. Suppose we select three different employees sequentially at random from this department.

Determine the probability of the following events.

(a) (2 points) The first employee has an MBA, given that there is a total of one MBA among all three

employees.

A. 0.333 B. 0.45 C. 0.5 D. 0.889

(b) (2 points) There are exactly two employees with an MBA, given that the first employee has an

MBA.

A. 37.95% B. 49.45% C. 53.1% D. 78.8%

(c) (2 points) The first employee has an MBA, given that there is at least one MBA among all three

employees.

A. 25% B. 35.45% C. 43.17% D. 49.06%

6. (6 points) Professor Moore forgets to set his alarm with a probability of 0.10. If he sets the alarm, it

will wake him on time to make his first class with a probability of 0.95. If he forgets to set the alarm,

he wakes up in time for his first class with a probability of 0.25.

(a) (3 points) What is the probability that Professor Moore wakes up in time to make his first class

tomorrow?

A. 75% B. 79% C. 88% D. 95%

(b) (3 points) Professor Moore was late to his first class. What is the probability that Professor Moore

set his alarm given this information and the information from part 1?

A. 33.33% B. 37.5% C. 45.0% D. 50.8%

7. (14 points) The weight of a randomly selected bag of cement coming off a production line is a random

variable with mean µ = 25 pounds and standard deviation σ = 1 pound. Assume that the weights of

bags are independent from each other.

(a) (2 points) If we pick four bags at random, what is the mean of the sum of the weights of the four

bags?

A. 25 B. 50 C. 400 D. 100

(b) (2 points) What is the standard deviation of four times the weight of ONE bag that is randomly

picked?

A. 2 pounds B. 4 pounds C. 8 pounds D. 16 pounds

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 (c) (2 points) What is the standard deviation of the sum of the weights of the FOUR bags that are

randomly picked?

A. 2 pounds B. 4 pounds C. 8 pounds D. 16 pounds

(d) (2 points) Compare your answer to (2) and (3). Which of the following intuitive explanations is

most likely?

A. The answers to (2) and (3) should be the same because the two situations are equivalent.

B. The answer to (2) should be smaller than the answer to (3) simply because there are less

random variables in (2) than in (3).

C. The answer to (2) should be larger than the answer to (3) because there is only one random

event in (2) versus four random events in (3), whose independence contribute to lower risk.

(e) (2 points) Assuming that the weight of the bag is normally distributed, what is the probability

of the sum of the four weights being more that 104 pounds? You can use the 68-95-99.7 rule to

calculate the probability.

A. 10% B. 5% C. 2.5% D. 0.3%

(f) (4 points) This production line is located in a poor country and the workers are required to pick

four bags of cement each time and load them into a truck. Heavy loads cause injuries. The mean

of a bag’s weight cannot be changed. What should be the standard deviation of a bag’s weight to

make sure the sum of the weights of the four bags exceeds 104 pounds only 0.5% of the time?

A. 0.31 pounds B. 0.78 pounds C. 1.05 pounds D. 4.5 pounds

8. (2 points) Let C and D be two events with P (C) = 0.25, P (D) = 0.45, and P (C ∩ D) = 0.1. What is

P (C c ∩ D)?

A. 0.25 B. 0.35 C. 0.45

9. (6 points) Suppose that events A and B are independent, B and C are independent and A and C are

independent with P (A) = 0.3, P (B) = 0.4, P (C) = 0.5, P (A ∩ B ∩ C) = 0.06. Compute the following:

(Hint: Use a Venn diagram)

(a) (2 points) P (A ∩ B ∩ C c )

A. 0.06 B. 0.12 C. 0.09 D. 0.14

(b) (2 points) P (A ∩ B c ∩ C)

A. 0.06 B. 0.15 C. 0.09 D. 0.14

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 (c) (2 points) P (Ac ∩ B ∩ C)

A. 0.2 B. 0.12 C. 0.09 D. 0.14

4 Statistical Inference

10. (3 points) We want to determine the average number of students in each classroom at Desautels. To do

this, we recorded the number of students in 15 classrooms and the average number of students was x̄ = 31.

Assume that the number of students across all classrooms at Desautels follows a Normal distribution

with standard deviation of σ = 5 (but the mean µ is unknown). Compute the 95% confidence interval

for the mean number of students µ in each classroom at Desautels.

A. [28.45, 33.53] B. [21.20, 40.80] C. [26.25, 35.73] D. [23.05, 38.93]

11. (3 points) The finish times (in minutes) of all Montrealers who ran the marathon follows an unknown

distribution with mean µ and standard deviation σ = 100. Suppose that we observe the finish times of

100 runners, and obtain a confidence interval for µ which is equal to 400 ± 15. What is the confidence

level used for this interval (hint: it does not have to be 90% or 95%)?

A. 81.4% B. 86.6% C. 90.8% D. 93.7%

12. (2 points) The money per meal that Montrealers spend in restaurants is Normally distributed with mean

µ and standard deviation σ = 4. Suppose I want the margin of error for a 95% confidence interval with

a width of 4. What is the sample size I should select? (approximate the sample size by rounding up to

the nearest integer)

A. 8 observations B. 13 observations C. 16 observations D. 19 observations