Quiz 1 Data and graphical descriptive statistics

1. The South African government is concerned about the high incidence of HIV/AIDS
in South Africa. They wish to estimate the true number of people in South Africa who
are HIV positive. A random sample of 5000 people were tested and 1980 of them
were HIV positive. What is the parameter of interest?
a. The number of people in South Africa
b. The 5000 people sampled
*c. The number of people in South Africa who are HIV positive
d. The 1980 people sampled who were HIV positive
e. None of the above

2. The South African government is concerned about the high incidence of HIV/AIDS
in South Africa. They wish to estimate the true number of people in South Africa who
are HIV positive. A random sample of 5000 people were tested and 1980 of them
were HIV positive. What is the statistic?
a. The 5000 people sampled
b. All the people in South Africa
*c. The 1980 people sampled who were HIV positive
d. Impossible to calculate from the given information
e. None of the above

3. The South African government is concerned about the high illiteracy rates amongst
adults in South Africa. They wish to estimate the true number of adults (over 18 years
of age) in South Africa who are illiterate (that is, they cannot read or write in at least
one language). A random sample of 10000 adults were interviewed and 1107 of them
were found to be illiterate. What is the parameter of interest in this situation?
a. The number of adults in South Africa
*b. The number of adults in South Africa who are illiterate
c. The number of adults of the 10000 sampled who are illiterate
d. The total number of people in South Africa

4. The South African government is concerned about the high illiteracy rates amongst
adults in South Africa. They wish to estimate the true number of adults (over 18 years
of age) in South Africa who are illiterate (that is, they cannot read or write in at least
one language). A random sample of 10000 adults were interviewed and 1107 of them
were found to be illiterate. What is the statistic in this situation?
a. The number of adults in South Africa
b. The number of adults in South Africa who are illiterate
*c. The number of adults of the 10000 sampled who are illiterate
d. The total number of people in South Africa
e. None of the above

5. The science faculty is trying to estimate the proportion of their students who have
access to a computer at home. A random sample of 300 science students were
interviewed. The population of interest in this experiment is:
*a. All registered UCT students who are in the science faculty
b. All registered UCT students who have computers at home
c. All registered UCT students
d. The 300 science faculty students who were interviewed
e. None of the above

6. The science faculty is trying to estimate the proportion of their students who have
access to a computer at home. A random sample of 300 science students were
interviewed. The statistic obtained in this experiment is:
*a. The proportion of the 300 science students interviewed who have computers at
home
b. The proportion all UCT students who have a computer at home
c. The proportion of all UCT students who were interviewed
d. The proportion of the interviewed students who are in the science faculty
e. None of the above

7. The commerce faculty is trying to estimate the proportion of their students who
have access to the internet at home. A random sample of 500 commerce students were
interviewed. The population of interest in this experiment is:
a. All registered UCT students who have computers at home
b. All registered UCT students
c. The 500 commerce faculty students who were interviewed
*d. All registered UCT students who are in the commerce faculty
e. None of the above

8. The commerce faculty is trying to estimate the proportion of their students who
have access to the internet at home. A random sample of 500 commerce students were
interviewed. The statistic obtained in this experiment is:
a. The proportion all UCT students who have a computer at home
*b. The proportion of the 500 commerce students interviewed who have access to the
internet at home
c. The proportion of all UCT students who were interviewed
d. The proportion of the interviewed students who are in the commerce faculty

9. Which of the following is an example of a ranked (ordinal) variable?

a. Your favourite breakfast cereal
b. Your monthly cell phone expenditure
*c. The rating (excellent, good, fair or poor) that you would give your stats lecturer
d. The first three digits of your car’s registration number
e. Your favourite make of car

10. Which of the following is an example of a ranked (ordinal) variable?

*a. The rating (excellent, good, fair or poor) that you would give the service at a
particular fast food chain
b. Your favourite TV programme
c. Your annual expenditure on clothing
d. The first three digits of your cellphone number
e. Your monthly cellphone expenditure

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

a. The number of letters in the Greek alphabet
b. The number of rectangles on a chess board
c. The length of time it takes to download a program off the internet
d. The number of years making up a century
*e. The number of students who pass STA100S each year

12. Which of the following is most likely a continuous quantitative variable?

a. The number of litres of paint purchased at a hardware shop
b. The number of goals scored by a footballer in the Coca-Cola Cup final
c. The population of Egypt
d. The number of litres of beer (to the nearest litre) sold by SAB annually
*e. The time taken to complete a particular crossword puzzle in a magazine

13. The manager of an estate-agency wishes to monitor the performance of her sales
staff. She records the number of properties sold by each of the 15 staff members for a
randomly chosen period of time. What type of variable is “number of properties
sold”?
*a. quantitative and discrete
b. quantitative and continuous
c. qualitative and discrete
d. qualitative and continuous
e. None of the above

14. The daily percentage change (to the nearest percent) of an equity traded on the
JSE was monitored for 100 days by an investment analyst. What type of variable is
“daily percentage change”?
*a. quantitative and discrete
b. quantitative and continuous
c. qualitative and discrete
d. qualitative and continuous
e. None of the above

15. Which of the following is a qualitative variable?

a. annual salary
b. weight
c. age
d. number of siblings
*e. eye colour

16. Which of the following is a qualitative random variable?

a. height of the cable car station on the top of Table Mountain in Cape Town
b. distance in metres that you have walked already today
c. nicotine content of a cigarette
*d. highest educational qualification of respondents in an interview
e. None of the above

17. Which of the following is a quantitative random variable?

a. height of the cable car station on the top of Table Mountain in Cape Town
b. number of cents in R10.00
c. number of letters in the alphabet
*d. number of people responding positively to the question “Do you enjoy your job?”
during a telephone interview
e. None of the above
18. Which of the following is a qualitative variable?
*a. favourite brand of toothpaste
b. number of people preferring shopping at Checkers to shopping at Pick ‘n Pay
c. class test 2 mark for a certain STA100 student
d. number of shares on the JSE who have increased in value during a particular week
e. None of the above

19. Which of the following statements involve descriptive statistics as opposed to

inferential statistics?
*a. The South African Police Service reported that 578 murders were committed in
Cape Town in 1997
b. Based on a survey of 400 magazine readers, the magazine reports that 45% of its
readers prefer articles related to health issues
c. The Airports Company of South Africa samples 500 air traffic controllers in order
to estimate the percent retiring due to job stress related illness
d. Based on a sample of 300 professional tennis players, a tennis magazine reported
that 25% of the parents of all professional tennis players did not play tennis
e. None of the above

20. Which of the following statements involve inferential statistics as opposed to

descriptive statistics?
a. The South African Police Service reported that 578 murders were committed in
Cape Town in 1997
b. The Airports Company of South Africa reports that 20 air traffic controllers retired
last year due to stress-related illnesses
c. A class of 1543 STA100S students earned an average mark of 75.5% for class test 2
*d. Based on a sample of 500 subscribers, a local cellphone network provider
estimates that 60% of its subscribers make at least one call to another cellphone per
day
e. None of the above

21. A population value or characteristic that is of interest to us and that we would like
to estimate is called:
a. a hypothesis
b. a statistic
c. a population
d. inferential statistics
*e. a parameter

22. You asked ten of your friends who are at UCT about their weight. On the basis of
this information, you stated that the average weight of all students at UCT is 69kg.
The conclusion that 69kg is the average weight of all UCT students is an example of:
a. descriptive statistics
*b. inferential statistics
c. a parameter
d. a population
e. None of the above

23. A summary measure that is computed from a sample to describe a characteristic of

the population is called
a. a parameter
*b. a statistic
c. a population
d. inferential statistics
e. None of the above

24. Which of the following is not the goal of descriptive statistics?

a. Summarizing data
b. Displaying aspects of the collected data
c. Reporting numerical findings
*d. Estimating characteristics of the population
e. None of the above

25. What is statistical inference?

a. The process of drawing conclusions about a sample based on population data
b. The process of drawing conclusions about a statistic based on a parameter
c. The process of drawing conclusions about a population based on a parameter
*d. The process of drawing conclusions about a population based on sample data
e. None of the above

26. The following ages are those of 15 people interviewed at the Ster-Kinekor movie
theatres in Canal Walk shopping centre: 12, 14, 15, 19, 19, 21, 27, 31, 32, 46, 53, 56,
57, 58, 59. Describe the shape of a stem and leaf plot of the data.
a. Unimodal and skewed to the right
b. Symmetrical
c. Unimodal and skewed to the left
*d. Bimodal
e. None of the above

27. If you have data on the yearly average temperature at Cape Town International
Airport from 1900 to 2000, and if you are particularly interested in change over time,
what is the most effective graphical display?
a. histogram
b. scatter plot
c. ogive
d. pie chart
*e. line chart

28. If you suspect that a population is made up of two subpopulations, for example
males and females, with different values for a certain continuous variable, which of
the following would you use to visually check for such a possible difference?
a. the median of a histogram
b. the skewness of the histogram
c. the modes of a line chart
*d. the modes of a histogram
e. None of the above

29. If you have data on house prices and the distance of each of those houses from the
city centre, and you are curious whether there is an association between distance from
the city centre and the price of the house, with which of the following graphical
techniques could you most easily see whether there is indeed such a relationship?
a. two histograms, one of house prices and one of distance from city centre
*b. a scatter diagram
c. a bar graph with distance on the x-axis and price on the y-axis
d. a bimodal histogram
e. None of the above

30. The following values are the number of ice-creams sold by an ice-cream vendor
on campus per day over a two-week period (the values have been sorted): 13, 14, 17,
17, 24, 26, 28, 29, 29, 31, 32, 38, 45, 57. The distribution of ice-cream sales can be
described as:
a. bi-modal and positively skewed
b. uni-modal and negatively skewed
c. bi-modal and negatively skewed
*d. uni-modal and positively skewed

31. The following values are the number of people buying laptop computers from a
particular electronics shop per day over a two-week period (the values have been
sorted): 13, 14, 17, 17, 24, 26, 28, 29, 29, 31, 32, 38, 45, 57. The distribution of ice-
cream sales can be described as:
a. bi-modal and positively skewed
b. uni-modal and negatively skewed
c. bi-modal and negatively skewed
*d. uni-modal and positively skewed
e. None of the above

32. It has been claimed that Vodacom has the highest market share amongst cellphone
users in South Africa. A random sample of 250 cellphone users were asked which
network they subscribe to. What type of data has been collected and which graphical
technique would be the most appropriate to highlight the various market shares,
amongst those listed below?
a. Quantitative data to be represented in a pie chart
b. Qualitative data to be represented in a histogram
c. Quantitative data to be represented in a bar chart
*d. Qualitative data to be represented in a pie chart

33. It has been claimed that BCom students make up the largest group of students
from a single degree programme amongst all students taking the STA100S course.
You wish to investigate this and ask 1200 STA100S students which degree they are
currently registered for. What type of data have you collected and how could this be
best represented, given the options below?
*a. Qualitative data to be represented in a pie chart
b. Qualitative data to be represented in a histogram
c. Quantitative data to be represented in a bar chart
d. Quantitative data to be represented in a pie chart
e. None of the above
34. A stem and leaf display describes two-digit integers between 20 and 80. For one of
the classes displayed, the row appears as 3|2 6 8. What numeric values are being
described?
*a. 32, 36 and 38
b. 23, 63 and 83
c. 3.2, 3.6 and 3.8
d. 32, 36 and 37
e. None of the above

35. A stem-and-leaf display describes two-digit integers between 20 and 80. For one
of the classes displayed, the row appears as 5|246. What numerical values are being
described?
a. 25, 45, and 65
b. 60, 50, 40, and 20
*c. 52, 54, and 56
d. 46 and 52
e. None of the above

36. The graphical representation of a cumulative relative frequency distribution is

called?
a. Histogram
b. Pie chart
c. Stem and leaf plot
d. Box and whisker plot
*e. None of the above

37. All 616 members of a sports club in Cape Town were contacted via email and
asked whether they thought that Karate should be added to the list of sports currently
offered by the club. 146 members said yes, 91 said no, 58 said that they were not sure
and 321 did not respond. To represent this information graphically, we could use a:
a. histogram
b. box and whisker plot
*c. bar graph
d. stem and leaf plot
e. None of the above

38. A histogram is a graphical representation of which of the following:

a. An ogive
*b. A frequency distribution
c. A cumulative relative frequency distribution
d. A stem and leaf plot
e. None of the above

39. Which of the following statements is false?

*a. Ranked/ordinal data is most effectively presented with pie charts.
b. If a histogram is positively skewed, the mean is larger than the median.
c. An advantage of stem and leaf displays is that the values of the original
observations are shown.
d. A histogram can have more than one mode.
e. None of the above
40. Which of the following is not found in a frequency distribution?
a. Class limits
b. Class intervals
*c. Individual observations within each class
d. All of the above are found in a frequency distribution.
e. None of the above are found in a frequency distribution

41. A frequency distribution is a(n):

a. table of the individual observations collected from a sample.
b. individual listing of the random values found in a data set.
c. listing of the individual observations arranged in ascending or descending order.
*d. table, which classifies the number of data values into classes with counts of the
number of data values that fall into each of the classes.
e. None of the above

42. The stem-and-leaf display:

a. reveals far more information relative to individual values than does the histogram.
b. allows the median to be easily identified.
c. does not allow the original data values to be identified
*d. both A and B are correct
e. None of the above are correct

43. The difference between a histogram and a bar chart is that:

a. the histogram reflects qualitative data while the bar chart represents quantitative
data.
b. the adjacent rectangles/bars in a histogram have a gap while those for a bar chart do
not.
c. the histogram reflects both qualitative and quantitative data while the bar chart
represents only qualitative data.
*d. the adjacent rectangles/bars in a bar chart have a gap while those for a histogram
do not.
e. None of the above

44. The two graphical techniques that can be used to represent nominal data are:
a. bar chart and histogram
b. pie chart and ogive
*c. bar chart and pie chart
d. histogram and ogive
e. None of the above

45. A certain company employs a large number of people earning rather average
salaries (compared with employees of this kind across South Africa) and a few senior
managers who earn very large salaries. What is a histogram of salaries for this
company likely to look like?
*a. positively skewed
b. negatively skewed
c. bimodal
d. symmetrical
e. we would need more information to be able to answer this question
46. A certain company employs a large number of senior managers earning very high
salaries (compared with employees of this kind across South Africa) and a few others
who earn comparatively small salaries. What is a histogram of salaries for this
company likely to look like?
a. positively skewed
*b. negatively skewed
c. symmetrical
d. bimodal
e. we would need more information to be able to answer this question

47. Which of the following sampling techniques are considered to be random if we

were trying to estimate the average IQ of UCT students using a sample of 500
students?
*a. Place each registered student’s name in a hat, shuffle it and draw out 500 names
b. Randomly choose 500 students from the dean’s merit list
c. Sit on Jameson stairs during 1st period and interview the first 500 students you meet
d. Interview 500 students after a STA100S class
e. None of the above

48. Which of the following sampling techniques are considered to be random if we

were trying to estimate the average number of CD’s owned by STA100S students?
a. Randomly select students from the Dean’s Merit list who are also STA100S
students
b. Place a survey on the STA100S WebCT site over a two-day period
*c. Take the entire STA100S class list and get a computer package like Excel to
randomly select 200 names for you to contact and interview
d. Interview 200 students after a third period STA100S class
e. None of the above

49. In rating the service provided by a waiter/waitress, the following responses are
possible: excellent, above average, average, below average, and poor. The responses
are coded from 1 to 5 with 5 being excellent. These observations are on the:
a. nominal scale
*b. ordinal scale
c. interval scale
d. ratio scale
e. None of the above

50. Robert Arthur is registered for a BBusSc degree with code: Comb03. Shara
Kumar is registered for a BCom degree with code: Comb06. These observations are
on the:
a. descriptive scale
*b. nominal scale
c. ordinal scale
d. interval scale
e. None of the above
51. You ask five of your classmates about their height. On the basis of this
information you conclude that the average height of all UCT students is 170 cm. This
is an example of:
a. descriptive statistics
*b. statistical inference
c. a parameter
d. a population
e. None of the above

52. Which of the following statements is false?

a. A frequency distribution counts the number of observations in each of a series of
classes that cover the complete range of the observations.
*b. The classes in a frequency distribution should overlap to ensure that each
observation belongs to at least one class.
c. The frequency distribution is often graphically represented in the form of a
histogram.
d.The number of classes we should use in a frequency distribution is related to the
number of observations in our data set.

53. The relative frequency for a class in a frequency distribution is calculated by:
a. dividing the frequency of the class by the number of classes
b. dividing the frequency of the class by the class width
*c. dividing the frequency of the class by the total number of observations in the data
set
d. subtracting the lower limit of the class from the upper limit and multiplying the
difference by the number of classes

54. The sum of the relative frequencies for all classes in a frequency distribution will
always equal
a. the number of classes
b. the class width
c. the total number of observations in the data set
d. the largest observation in the data set
*e. one

55.Consider these three variables: (i) whether you are a SA citizen (ii) your marital
status (iii) the time it took you to get to UCT this morning. In the order given, these
variables are:
a. nominal, interval, interval
b. interval, interval, nominal
c. nominal, interval, nominal
*d. nominal, nominal, interval
e. nominal, nominal, nominal