EXAMINATION NO.

______________________

THE PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS EXAMINATION

COUNCIL OF MALAWI

ACCOUNTING TECHNICIAN PROGRAMME

PAPER TC 3: BUSINESS MATHEMATICS & STATISTICS

TUESDAY 27 NOVEMBER 2012 TIME ALLOWED: 3 HOURS

9.00 AM - 12.00 NOON

INSTRUCTIONS

1. You are allowed 15 minutes reading time before the examination begins during
which you should read the question paper and, if you wish, make annotations on the
question paper. However, you are not allowed, under any circumstances, to open
the answer book and start writing or use your calculator during this reading time.

2. Number of questions on paper - 9.

3. The paper is divided into Sections A and B. ALL questions to be answered in
Section A and ANY TWO from Section B.

4. The maximum number of marks for each answer is indicated against each
question.

5. Mathematical Tables, Formulae Sheets and Graph Paper are provided.

6. Use of non-programmable calculators is allowed.
7. Show all your workings in order to gain full marks. Method marks will be
awarded throughout.

8. Final answers must be given correct to 2 decimal places where necessary.

9. Begin each answer on a fresh page.

10. DO NOT OPEN THIS PAPER UNTIL YOU ARE INSTRUCTED BY THE
INVIGILATOR.

This question paper contains 7 pages

This question paper must not be removed from the examination hall.
 1

SECTION A

ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS IN THIS SECTION

1. (a)
Using factorisation, evaluate: 401 1012 99 2 . 3 Marks

(b) Given that log 3 2 0.63093 , find:

1
log 3 6 3 ,

correct to 4 decimal places. 4 Marks

(TOTAL : 7 MARKS)

x 3 3x
2. (a) Solve the following inequality: 7 4 Marks
5 10

(b) A popular restaurant hires students to work part time. Waiters are paid
K300 per hour and cashiers are paid K350 per hour. Last week Masankho
worked 12 hours as a waiter and 9 hours as a cashier.

Required:

(i) Calculate Masankhos wages for the week. 2 Marks

(ii) Another student, Chipiliro, worked 15 hours as a cashier and

received K11,250 as her wages. If she also worked as a waiter,
how many hours did she work as a waiter? 4 Marks
(TOTAL : 10 MARKS)

3. (a) Ujeni spent K4,980 on utilities (water and electricity), K32,520 on food,
K2,280 on entertainment, K8,760 on clothing and K11,580 on fertilizer.

Required:

Construct a fully labelled pie chart to show Ujenis expenditure. 5 Marks

Continued/
 2

(b) A company with manufacturing plants in Ntaja and Naisi has labour-hour
and wage requirements for the manufacturing of two inexpensive bicycles
as given in matrices M and N below.

Labour hours per bicycle

Fabricatin g Assembly Packaging

Dept Dept Dept
2 3 1 Model A
M
1 2 2 Model B

Wages (K) per hour

Ntaja Naisi
150 120 Fabricatin g Dept

N 120 100 Assembly Dept
40 30 Packaging Dept

Required:

Find MN and interpret the matrix obtained. 4 Marks

(TOTAL : 9 MARKS)

4. (a) Mrs Mauambeta retired from Chuma Bank and received K13,000,000 as
her retirement package. She decided to invest the money to earn a 15%
compound interest rate annually.

Required:

Calculate, to the nearest whole number, the time it will take the money to
double. 4 Marks

Continued/
 3

(b) Sapitwa Airways has two aeroplanes, the DC1 and DC2. The DC1 carries
20 business class passengers and 30 economy class passengers while the
DC2 carries 30 business class passengers and 40 economy class
passengers on a single flight. The airline wishes to transport 1,900
business class and 2,700 economy class passengers over the Christmas
period.

Required:

(i) Assuming all seats are filled on all flights, formulate two
simultaneous equations using the information given. 2 Marks

(ii) Using the elimination method, find the number of flights for each
plane type required to transport the 4,600 passengers over the
Christmas period. 5 Marks

(iii) If the DC1 and DC2 planes cost MK90,000 and MK110,000 to
operate per flight respectively, find the airlines total operational
costs during this period. 2 Marks
(TOTAL : 13 MARKS)

5. (a) A utility vehicle uses one litre of petrol to travel 10.5 km. On a full tank
the vehicle travels 525 km.

Required:

Calculate the distance the vehicle will travel on a full tank if it uses one
litre of petrol to cover 12 km. 3 Marks

(b) A company selected 1,000 households at random and surveyed them to

determine the relationship between income level and the number of
television sets in a home. The data are given in the following table:

Monthly income No. of Television sets per household

0 1 2 3 Above 3
Less than K20,000 0 40 51 11 0

K20,000 but less than K40,000 0 70 80 15 1

K40,000 but less than K60,000 2 112 130 80 12

K60,000 but less than K80,000 10 90 80 60 21

K80,000 or more 30 32 28 25 20

Continued/
 4

Required:

Calculate the probability that a randomly selected household:

(i) has a monthly income of less than K60,000 and owns three
televisions sets. 2 Marks

(ii) earns more than K80,000 per month or owns more than three
television sets. 3 Marks
(TOTAL : 8 MARKS)

400
6. (a) Given that the cost function is C 0.25q 4 where q is the
q
quantity of items produced.

Required:
dC
Find q when 0 and interpret the result obtained. 5 Marks
dq

(b) A factory decides to terminate a production line by successively reducing

its output by 20% per week. At the time the decision is made, the output
from the line was 500 articles per week. The production in the first week
of reducing production was therefore 400 articles. It was further decided
that production would terminate after the week in which the rate of
production would first fall below 100 articles per week.

Required:

(i) Determine the number of weeks over which reducing production

occurs. 6 Marks

(ii) How many articles were made during this period? 2 Marks
(TOTAL : 13 MARKS)

Continued/
 5

SECTION B
ANSWER TWO QUESTIONS ONLY FROM THIS SECTION

7. (a) Mpondamatiki Holdings has collected data on last years annual turnover
for 200 of its subsidiary companies. The relevant data are shown in the
following table.

Turnover (K000) Number of companies

Below 320 52
320 and less than 360 50
360 and less than 400 38
400 and less than 440 30
440 and less than 480 22
480 and less than 750 8

Required:

(i) Find the total annual turnover for the 200 companies. 3 Marks

(ii) Construct a Lorenz curve for the distribution of the number of

companies and annual turnover. 8 Marks

(iii) Considering the Lorenz curve constructed in (ii) above, what

would you conclude about the distribution of turnover among the
200 companies? 2 Marks
(b) (i) Define the term payback period. 1 Mark

(ii) Cite one advantage and one disadvantage of payback period as a

method of investment appraisal. 2 Marks
(iii) A new project demands an initial outlay of K1,100,000 capital with
the following expected returns:

Year 1 2 3 4 5
Returns (K) 300,000 200,000 400,000 350,000 400,000

Required:
Find the payback period for the project. 4 Marks
(TOTAL : 20 MARKS)

Continued/
 6

8. (a) (i) State the difference between internal and external data sources.
Give an example of each source. 4 Marks

(ii) State one advantage of internal and one advantage of external data
sources. 2 Marks

(b) A financial analyst has made sales forecasts using two different methods.
The following data give the actual sales of eight companies together with
the forecasts of sales by two different methods:

Company Actual sales Forecast 1 Forecast 2

A 140 120 150

B 180 240 180
C 290 220 250
D 110 250 130
E 570 470 640
F 90 140 180
G 220 270 260
H 160 90 210

Required:

Calculate the rank correlation between:

(i) Actual sales and forecast 1 6 Marks

(ii) Actual sales and forecast 2. 6 Marks
(iii) Which method would you recommend for use next year?
Give a reason for your answer. 2 Marks
(TOTAL : 20 MARKS)

Continued/
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9. (a) There are many data collection methods at a researchers disposal. Two of
them are telephone interviews and questionnaires.

Required:

(i) State any two reasons why some researchers prefer telephone
interviews to other methods and two reasons why other researchers
do not like telephone interviews. 4 Marks

(ii) Describe three major sections that any questionnaire should have
besides the questions and corresponding options. 6 Marks

(b) A farmer grows beans, groundnuts, maize and rice. The following table
shows the harvest (in tonnes) that he registered for each crop at his farms
located at Jali, Makwasa, Lunzu and Mpemba.

Location Harvest (tonnes)

Beans G/nuts Maize Rice

Jali 255 310 175 200

Makwasa 405 375 180 270
Lunzu 75 55 30 50
Mpemba 110 175 150 105

The farmer has hired you to construct a single chart that will help him
compare the crop harvest.

Required:

(i) Mention two charts that would be appropriate to show these data
and, for each, give reasons. 4 Marks

(ii) Construct a fully labelled multiple bar chart to show these data.
6 Marks
(TOTAL : 20 MARKS)

END