INSTRUCTIONS

MULTIPLE CHOICE ITEMS [Total = 50 marks]

Instructions: Read each item and circle the letter with the correct response.

1. Which of the following is an example of discrete random variable?

a. The monthly electric bill for a local business.

b. The number of people eating at a local café between noon and 2:00 p.m.

c. The amount of time it takes for a worker to complete a complex task.

d. The percentage of people living below the poverty level in a particular city.

2. What is the correct ranking of data from weakest type to strongest?

a. Nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio.

b. Ordinal, nominal, interval, and ratio.

c. Interval, nominal, ratio and ordinal.

d. Nominal, interval, ordinal and ratio.

3. Which of the following statements is incorrect?

a. Ordinal data may be described as qualitative.

b. Nominal data may be described as quantitative.

c. A categorical variable may produce ordinal data.

d. A discrete numerical variable may produce ratio scale data.

4. The following represent the distance, in miles, that 10 employees of a firm must travel each way to

work from home. Calculate the mean number of miles driven.

6.4, 14.7, 18.5, 6.4, 17.3, 12.2, 1.8, 12.8, 11.0, 7.9

a. 10.9 b. 11.6 c. 16.7 d. 6.4

5. The following represents the distance, in miles, that 8 employees of a firm must travel each way from

work to home. Calculate the standard deviation of the number of miles driven.

2.2, 10.7, 2.1, 5.4, 16.3, 12.1, 1.8, 2.6

a. 5.62 b. 4.92 c. 31.60 d. 27.65

6. The manager in charge of production at a local manufacturing plant is worried about work stoppages
in his four production lines. In particular, the manager is evaluating the likelihood of the next stoppage
occurring on production line 1. The manager figures that each of the lines is equally likely to have the
next stoppage, therefore, the probability that the production line 1 is stopped next is 25%.

This is an example of:

a. Subjective probability. b. Classical probability.

 c. Relative frequency probability. d. Bayesian probability.

7. The manager in charge of production at a local manufacturing plant is worried about work stoppages
in his four production lines. In particular, the manager is evaluating the likelihood of the next stoppage
occurring on production line 1. Based on previous stoppage records, the manager figures that the
probability that the production line 1 is stopped next is 25%.

This is an example of:

a. Subjective probability. b. Classical probability.

c. Relative frequency probability. d. Bayesian probability.

8. A multiple choice quiz has five questions, each with five answers, a through e. If you guess on all
questions, what is the probability that you get at least one right?

a. 0.20 b. 0.67 c. 0.34 d. 0.61

9. The probability that an employee at a company eats lunch at the company cafeteria is 0.23. The
probability that an employee is female is 0.52. The probability that an employee eats lunch at the
company cafeteria and is female is 0.11. What is the probability that a randomly chosen employee either
eats at the cafeteria or is female?

a. 0.18 b. 0.86 c. 0.44 d. 0.64

10. The probability that an employee at a company uses illegal drugs is 0.08. The probability that an
employee is male is 0.62. Assuming that these events are independent, what is the probability that a
randomly chosen employee is a male drug user?

a. 0.64 b. 0.70 c. 0.05 d. 0.07

11. The probability that a new small business closes before the end of its first year is 42%. In addition,
37% of all new businesses are started by women. The probability that a new business is either owned by
a woman or goes out of business is 62%. Your sister wants to start a new business. What is the
probability she is still open at the end of the year?

a. 0.17 b. 0.54 c. 0.63 d. 0.58

12. In a survey of top executives, it was found that 17% had traveled internationally on business. The
probability of one of these executives fluently speaking a foreign language was found to be 10%. The
probability that one of these executives neither spoke a foreign language nor had traveled
internationally was 0.81. What is the probability that an executive who speaks a foreign language has
traveled internationally?

a. 0.02 b. 0.08 c. 0.32 d. 0.80

13 – 15. A recent marketing survey tried to relate a consumer’s awareness of a new marketing campaign
with their rating of product. Consumers rated their awareness as low, medium, or high, and rated the
product as poor, fair, or good. The results are presented below.

Awareness
Low Medium High
Poor 0.1 0.15 0.07
Ratings Fair 0.06 0.11 0.06
Good 0.07 0.11 0.27

13. What is the probability that a consumer had low awareness?

a. 0.1 b. 0.14 c. 0.23 d. 0.071

14. What is the probability that a consumer who ranked the product as fair had a high awareness of the
add campaign?

a. 0.06 b. 0.26 c. 0.23 d. 0.40

15. What is the probability that a consumer who had either medium or high awareness ranked the
product as good?
a. 0.49 b. 0.38 c. 0.77 d. 0.65

16. A junior executive looking at his business attire in his closet notes that he has five suits, six shirts and
three pairs of shoes. He is going on a business trip and needs to take two of each. How many different
combinations of outfits could he take?

a. 680 b. 320 c. 450 d. 224

17. Which of the following statement is true?

a. If events A and B are complements, then the intersection of A and the complement of B is the sample
space.

b. If events A and B are mutually exclusive, then the intersection of A and B is the empty set.

c. If events A and B are mutually exclusive, then the union of A and B is the sample space.

d. If events A and B are mutually exclusive, then the union of A and B is the empty set.

18. Which of the following is an example of a continuous random variable?

a. The number of cars in a parking lot.

b. The weight of a bag of potatoes.

c. The number of repairs at a computer shop over the course of the week.

d. The total runs scored in a cricket game.

19 – 20 Consider the following probability distribution function.

x 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

P(X) 0.07 0.19 0.23 0.17 0.16 0.14 0.04

19. What is the expected value of X?

a. 2.74 b. 0.46 c. 1.78 d. 3.02

20. What is the standard deviation of X?

a. 13.25 b. 3.64 c. 1.62 d. 4.13

21. On average, there are 3.2 defects in a sheet of rolled steel. Assuming that the number of defects
follows a Poisson distribution, what is the probability of a roll having more than 3 defects?

a. 0.354 b. 0.398 c. 0.412 d. 0.442

22 - 23. The probability that a person catches a cold during the flu season is 0.4. If 10 people are chosen
at random;

22. What is the probability that four or more of them will catch a cold?

a. 0.50 b. 0.62 c. 0.54 d. 0.58

23. What is the standard deviation for the number of persons catching a cold?

a. 0.155 b. 0.04 c. 0.62 d. 0.43

24. In an office of 18 people, there are 7 men and 11 women. A sub-committee of four people will be
formed from this group. What is the probability that the sub-committee contains two men and two
women?

a. 0.377 b. 0.50 c. 0.261 d. 0.413

25. 70% of the customers at the local ice cream shop order their ice cream on a sugar cone. Assuming
that the next ten customers order independently of one another, what is the probability that exactly
seven of them order sugar cones?

a. 0.27 b. 0.50 c. 1.00 d. 0.35

26. Let the random variable X follow a normal distribution with mean 17.1 and standard deviation 3.2.
What is P(15 < X < 20)?

a. 0.064 b. 0.436 c. 0.564 d. 0.936

27. The length of time it takes to fill an order at a local sandwich shop is normally distributed with a
mean of 4.1 minutes and standard deviation of 1.3 minutes. What is the probability that you have to
wait between 3 and 5 minutes?

a. 0.623 b. 0.557 c. 0.484 d. 0.421

28. You are in charge of arranging the catering for a company meeting. Your company is responsible for
paying for all meals ordered, so you don’t want to order too many. Suppose that the expected number of
people for the meeting is 84, with a standard deviation of 4 people. Assuming that the number of people
attending the event is normally distributed, what is the fewest number of meals should you order so that
the probability of having more people than meals is 5%?

a. 92 b. 90 c. 89 d. 91

29. The time it takes to assemble an electronic component is normally distributed with a mean of 17.2
minutes and standard deviation of 3.1 minutes. The probability is 95% that it will take at least how long
to assemble a component?

a. 12.7 b. 11.7 c. 12.2 d. 11.2

30. The number of nails in a five-pound box of nails is normally distributed with a mean of 563.3 and
standard deviation of 33.2. What is the probability that there are less than 500 nails in a randomly-
selected five-pound box of nails?

a. 0.528 b. 0.472 c. 0.028 d. 0.972

31. The length of time it takes to fill an order at a local sandwich shop is normally distributed with a
mean of 4.1 minutes and a standard deviation of 1.3 minutes. What is the probability that the average
waiting time for a random sample of ten customers is between 4.0 and 4.2 minutes?

a. 0.25 b. 0.12 c. 0.19 d. 0.15

32. Suppose that 15% of all invoices are for amounts greater than $1,000. A random sample of 60
invoices is taken. What is the mean and standard error of the sample proportion of invoices with
amounts in excess of $1,000?

a. Mean = 9, Standard error = 0.46 b. Mean = 0.15, Standard error = 0.46

c. Mean = 0.15, Standard error = 0.002 d. Mean = 9, Standard error = 0.002

33. The number of television sets coming off a production line each day is known to have a
standard deviation of 117.4 sets per day. The production manager tells you that the 90%
confidence interval for the population mean was 552.3 to 621.9. How large of a sample was this
confidence interval based on?

a. 31 b. 29 c. 33 d. 27

34. An advertisement claims that four out of five doctors recommend a particular product. A consumer
group wants to test that claim, and takes a random sample of 30 doctors. 95% of the time, we would
expect the proportion of doctors recommending the product in this sample to be between what two
values?

a. 0.68 and 0.92 b. 0.66 and 0.94 c. 0.70 and 0.90 d. 0.72 and 0.88

35. It has been estimated that 53% of college students change their major at least once during the
course of their college career. Suppose you are told that the sample proportion for a random sample was
0.48. Furthermore, you are told that the probability of getting a sample proportion of this size or smaller
is 14%. What must have the sample size been?

a. 116 b. 112 c. 120 d. 124

36. The Daytona Beach Tourism Commission is interested in the average amount of money a typical
college student spends per day during spring break. They survey 35 students and find that the mean
spending is $63.57 with a standard deviation of $17.32. What level of confidence is associated with an
interval of $58.62 to $68.52?

a. 99% b. 95% c. 98% d. 90%

37. The number of bolts produced each hour from a particular machine is normally distributed with a
standard deviation of 7.4. For a random sample of 15 hours, the average the number of bolts produced
was 587.3. What is the 98% confidence interval for the population mean number of bolts produced per
hour?

a. $582.85 to $591.75 b. $583.05 to $591.55 c. $582.58 to $592.02 d. $582.41 to $592.19

38. Which of the following actions will not reduce the size of a confidence interval?

a. Having the sample variance instead of the population variance. b. Decreasing the sample size.

c. Having a larger population variance. d. Decreasing the confidence level.

39. In a recent survey of 600 adults, 16.4% indicated that they had fallen asleep in front of the television
in the past month. Which of the following intervals represents a 96% confidence interval?

a. 0.137 to 0.192 b. 0.133 to 0.195 c. 0.140 to 0.189 d. 0.143 to 0.186

40. A random sample of 30 containers of paint revealed a sample standard of deviation of 2.3 ounces.
You are interested in the confidence interval for the population standard deviation. What is the level of
confidence associated with the interval 1.71 to 3.42?

a. 0.995 b. 0.99 c. 0.98 d. 0.975

41. You are told that a 95% confidence interval for the population mean of a normally distributed
variable is 17.3 to 24.5. If the population standard deviation is 18.2, how large was the sample?

a. 93 b. 98 c. 103 d. 108

42. You are told that a 95% confidence interval for the population mean of a normally distributed
variable is 17.3 to 24.5. if the population was 76, what was the sample standard deviation?

a. 15.7 b. 17.4 c. 16.0 d. 15.2

43. Daytona Beach Tourism Commission recently claimed that the average amount of money a typical
college student spends per day during spring break is over $70. Based upon previous research, the
population standard deviation is estimated to be $17.32. The commission surveys 35 students and finds
that the mean spending is $67.57. Which of the following statement is most accurate?

a. Unable to reject the null hypothesis at  ≤ 0.10. b. Reject the null hypothesis at  = 0.10.
c. Reject the null hypothesis at  = 0.05. d. Reject the null hypothesis at  = 0.01.
44. The supervisor of a production line believes that the average time to assemble an electronic
component is 14 minutes. Assume that the assembly time is normally distributed with standard
deviation of 3.4 minutes. For a sample of 40 components, she finds that the mean assembly time was 13
minutes. Test the null hypothesis that the average time is 14 minutes against the alternative that it is
different from 14 minutes. Which of the following statements is most accurate?

a. Unable to reject the null hypothesis at  ≤ 0.10. b. Reject the null hypothesis at  = 0.10.
c. Reject the null hypothesis at  = 0.05. d. Reject the null hypothesis at  = 0.01.
45. The manufacturer of a certain chewing gum claims that four out of five dentists surveyed prefer their
type of gum. You decide to test their claim. You find that in a sample of 200 doctors, 74.1% do actually
prefer their gum. Which of the following statement is most accurate?

a. Unable to reject the null hypothesis at  ≤ 0.10. b. Reject the null hypothesis at  = 0.05.
c. Reject the null hypothesis at  = 0.10. d. Reject the null hypothesis at  = 0.01.
46. The manufacturer of bags of cement claims that they fill each bag with at least 50.1 pounds of
cement. Assume that the standard deviation for the amount in each bag is 1.2 pounds. The decision rule
is adopted to shut down the filling machine if the sample mean weight for a sample of 40 bags is below
49.7. What is the probability of a Type I error?

a. 0.018 b. 0.024 c. 0.030 d. 0.036

47 – 48. An accountant claims that he can complete a standard tax return in under an hour. For a random
sample of 24 tax returns, the accountant averaged 63.2 minutes with standard deviation of 7.7 minutes.

47. What is the test statistic for this test?

a. Z = 2.04 b. t = 1.79 c. t = 2.04 d. Z = 1.79

48. What is the most accurate estimate of the p-value?

a. p-value < 0.05. b. p-value < 0.025. c. p-value < 0.10. d. p-value < 0.01.

49. A type II error may be defined as:

a. Rejecting a true alternative hypothesis. b. Rejecting a true null hypothesis.

c. Failing to reject a false alternative hypothesis. d. Failing to reject a false null hypothesis.

50. Match the following term with the proper definition.

(1 –  )

a. The probability of not rejecting the null hypothesis when the hypothesis is true.

b. The probability of a Type I error.

c. The probability of a Type II error.

d. The power of a test.