QMI1500

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QMI1500

Elementary Quantitative Methods

Department of Decision Sciences

Assignment questions, Semester 1 2022

Assignment: 03

Due date: 28 March 2022

Unique number: 746491

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ASSIGNMENT 03
Study material: Topics 4.5 - 6.4 in the Study Guide
Unique assignment number: 746491

FIXED DUE DATE: 28 March 2022

Important:

• This is a multiple-choice assignment that must be answered and submitted ONLINE.

• Always keep your detailed workings in a file to be able to compare your solutions to the ones that will
be published on the QMI1500 module site after the due date. Also, keep a copy of the options
you have chosen, in case of a query.

• The due date of this assignment is fixed. No extension can be granted because the solutions will be
posted on the QMI1500 module site shortly after the closing date.

Question 1
Aziz is planning to attend college when she graduates from high school four years from now. She has made an
arrangement with her father to do the household chores if her dad deposits R3 570,00 at the end of every six
months for the next four years in a bank account. The account pays 8,5% interest per annum, compounded
semi-annually. Her father pays and additional R5 550,00 into the account for every R3 570,00 deposit he
makes. The first deposit will be made six months from now. How much money will there be in the account
for Aziz to pay for her college expenses?

[1] R84 786,00.

[2] R60 773,69.
[3] R51 596,74.
[4] R12 723,40.

Question 2
Curwin has R3 003 650,00 saved for his retirement. His account earns 8,4% interest per annum, compounded
half-yearly. How much will he be able to withdraw at the end of each six month period, if he wants to be
able to take withdrawals for 15 years? The first withdrawal will start after six months. (No money will be
left after the 15 years.)

[1] R177 944,00

[2] R874 214,00
[3] R51 790,70
[4] R29 402,33

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Question 3
To save money for a new house, you want to begin contributing money to a savings account. Your plan
is to make equal contributions to the account for eight years. Each contribution will be R18 490,00. The
contributions will come at the end of every three month period, starting three months from now. The savings
account pays 9% interest per annum, compounded quarterly. How much money do you expect to have in
the account at the end of the eight years?

[1] R37 684,52

[2] R418 570,60
[3] R636 545,43
[4] R853 090,00

Question 4
Round the answer to this question to the nearest rand. David borrowed R911 012,00 to refurbish his holiday
home. The loan requires monthly repayments over 12 years. When he borrowed the money, the interest rate
was 12,4% per annum, compounded monthly, but five years later the bank increased the annual interest rate
to 13,9%, in line with market rates. After five years the present value of the loan is R682 081,77. With the
new interest rate, his monthly payments will increase by

[1] R12 745,00

[2] R7 705,00
[3] R3 649,00
[4] R558,00

Question 5
Edwill just purchased a new home costing R1 107 900,00 by paying R120 000,00 cash on the purchase date,
and agreeing to make payments at the end of the following eight years for the remainder owed; the first
payment is due one year after the purchase date. The interest rate is 7,4% per annum, compounded yearly.
This is illustrated by the following time line:

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 years

P @ 7,4% per annum, compounded annualy

Considering the amortisation schedule, the percentage, rounded to two decimal places, of the total payments
made the first two years that will go toward repayment of interest, is

[1] 43,51%.
[2] 41,42%.
[3] 58,58%.
[4] 70,71%.

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Question 6
Buildmazing Developers need an amount of money to expand their business. They secure a loan at an
interest rate of 10,5% per year, compounded annually. The outstanding balance will be repaid in equal
payments of R137 828,00 at the end of each year for the next seven years. Considering the amortisation
schedule, the principle repaid during the first three years, rounded to the nearest rand,is

[1] R227 891

[2] R185 593
[3] R83 662
[4] R413 484

Question 7
A quality-control exercise was carried out by ChocCheer for estimating the percentage of defective chocolate
bars in a large shipment of 1 000 boxes with 100 bars in each box. Twenty boxes were chosen at random,
and every bar in them checked. The number of defective bars in each of the boxes are:
8, 10, 4, 3, 11, 6, 9, 10, 2, 7, 6, 12, 9, 11, 6, 3, 14, 9, 5, 4
Choose the CORRECT statement.

[1] The variable is the 1 000 boxes of chocolate bars.

[2] The sample unit 149.
[3] The sample is the 20 boxes of chocolate bars that were selected.
[4] The population is the 100 chocolate bars per box.

Question 8
The ages (in years) of 50 individuals on a mailing list, in ascending order are:

10 11 13 14 14 15 15 17 18 20
20 21 22 24 26 26 26 27 29 30
31 31 33 34 36 36 36 37 38 39
40 41 41 43 44 45 45 46 47 48
49 51 53 55 57 58 59 59 60 60

Consider the frequency table for the data:

A B C D
Interval Frequency Frequency Frequency Frequency
0,5 – 15,5 5 7 7 5
15,5 – 30,5 14 13 12 15
30,5 – 45,5 16 17 18 14
45,5 – 60,5 15 13 13 16

The column that represents the correct frequencies for the data is

[1] A
[2] B
[3] C
[4] D

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Question 9
The following data show the number of cars sold at a dealer during the past 20 weeks:

18; 13; 2; 20; 8; 10; 5; 10; 6; 9; 10; 20; 2; 15; 16; 16; 13; 10; 17; 10

Use the data to construct a histogram that shows the number of weeks versus car sales. Use the intervals

0,5 – 4,5; 4,5 – 8,5; 8,5 – 12,5; 12,5 – 16,5; 16,5 – 20,5

for the number of cars sold. The correct histogram is

[1] [2]

6 6 6 6

5 5
Number of weeks (f )

Number of weeks (f )
5 5

4 4 4

3 3 3 3 3 3

2 2 2

1 1

0,5 4,5 8,5 12,5 16,5 20,5 0,5 4,5 8,5 12,5 16,5 20,5
Interval (Number of cars sold) Interval (Number of cars sold)

[3] [4]
6 6 6 6

5 5 5
Number of weeks (f )

Number of weeks (f )

5 5

4 4 4

3 3 3

2 2 2 2 2

1 1

0,5 4,5 8,5 12,5 16,5 20,5 0,5 4,5 8,5 12,5 16,5 20,5
Interval (Number of cars sold) Interval (Number of cars sold)

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Question 10
The following pie-chart shows the percentage distribution of the expenses incurred in publishing a new coffee
table book:

Adver-
tising
Binding
9% Printing
12%
21%

Authoring
17%
Shipping
Materials
27%

If 1 250 copies of the book are published, and shipping them amounts to R52 500,00, what should the selling
price of a single book be so that the publisher can earn a profit of 22%?

[1] R366,00.
[2] R300,00.
[3] R245,90.
[4] R322,00.

Question 11
A restaurant owner is concerned about the amount of time customers must wait before being served over
weekends. He collects data on the waiting times, to the nearest minute, of 20 tables on Friday evening and
15 tables on Saturday evening.

The average waiting time on Friday evening is 24 minutes per table.

The total waiting time for the 15 tables on Saturday evening is seven hours and three
quarters of an hour.
The mean waiting time per table for Friday and Saturday evening, rounded to the nearest minute, is

[1] 28 minutes
[2] 26 minutes
[3] 31 minutes
[4] 27 minutes

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Question 12
Over a period of time, the number of people leaving a hotel each morning was recorded. These data are
summarised in the stem-and-leaf diagram below:

Stem Leaf Frequency

2 7 9 9 3
3 2 2 3 4 6 5

4 0 1 4 8 9 5

5 2 3 3 6 6 6 8 7

6 0 1 4 5 4

7 2 3 2
8 1 1

Key: 3 5 = 35. Determine the mode and the median of the data.

[1] mode = 56; median = 52.

[2] mode = 27; median = 54.
[3] mode = 54; median = 56.
[4] mode = 7; median = 52.

Question 13
A salesman keeps a record of the number of shops he visits each day. The information is summarized in the
following frequency table:

Number of shops Frequency

visited f
0,5 – 7,5 8
7,5 – 14,5 23
14,5 – 21,5 30
21,5 – 28,5 42
28,5 – 35,5 10
35,5 – 42,5 7

Suppose you want to determine the mean number of shops that the salesman visited per day. The statement
that is NOT correct, is

[1] The salesman visited a total of 120 shops.


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[2] The value of fi xi = 2 468,00.
i=1

[3] The midpoint, xi , of the interval 21,5 – 28,5 shops is x4 = 25 shops.

[4] The interval width is seven days.

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Question 14
From her firm’s computer telephone log, an executive found that the mean length of telephone calls during
the previous week was 16,00 minutes. The data is shown in the following table:

Length of call Number of calls Midpoint

(minutes) (fi ) (xi )
2,5 – 7,5 22 5
7,5 – 12,5 33 10
12,5 – 17,5 42 15
17,5 – 22,5 11 20
22,5 – 27,5 22 25
27,5 – 32,5 9 30
32,5 – 37,5 6 35

She is trying to reduce the length of calls. She knows that if the standard deviation of the length of the
calls is small, most of the call lengths are spread around the mean of 16 minutes. The best estimate of the
standard deviation of the length of phone calls, rounded to two decimal places, is

[1] 145,00 minutes

[2] 67,92 minutes
[3] 8,24 minutes
[4] 4,16 minutes

Question 15
Data were collected on the amount, in rands, that individual customers spent on dinner in an Italian
restaurant. The quartiles for the data are given below:

Q1 Q2 Q3

166,80 203,60 270,30

Choose the correct statement.

[1] Seventy-five percent of the customers spent between R166,80 and R270,30
[2] Twenty-five percent of the customers spent less than or equal to R270,30 and the remaining seventy-
five percent spent more than or equal to R270,30
[3] Half of the customers spent less than or equal to R203,60 and half spent more than or equal to R203,60
[4] The majority of customers spent R203,60

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Question 16
Consider the following box-and-whiskers diagram:
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2

Which of the following statements are true?

1. The mean of the data is 15.

2. Seventy-five percent of the data lie below 16.
3. The range of the data is 16.
4. Twenty-five percent of the data lie below 15.

[1] only 4
[2] only 3
[3] 1 and 3
[4] 2 and 3

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Question 17
The parking garage at a train station offers two monthly payment plans for customers. Both plans consist
of a fixed monthly cost plus an additional cost per day. Plan A charges a fixed monthly fee of R55 plus R21
per day. The total cost for parking under plan B for a certain number of days is given in the table below:

Number of Cost
days parked (R)

3 106
10 260
18 436
20 480

If C represents your total parking cost per month and n represent the number of times you park your vehicle,
which of the following systems of equations best represents this situation?

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A: C = 55 + n
21
[1] 1
B: C = 105,86 + n
22

A: C = 55n + 21
[2]
B: C = 40n + 22

A: C = 40 + 22n
[3]
B: C = 55 + 21n

A: C = 55 + 21n
[4]
B: C = 40 + 22n

Question 18
Raggs Limited, a clothing firm, determines that the revenue, in rand, of selling x dresses is given by the
function
R(x) = x(450 − 0,050x).

It also determines that the total cost, in rand, of producing x dresses is given by the function

C(x) = 40 000 + 0,025x2 .

The marginal profit when x dresses are produced and sold, is given by the function

[1] P  (x) = −0,075x2 + 450x − 40 000

[2] P  (x) = −0,150x + 450
[3] P  (x) = 450 − 0,050x
[4] P  (x) = 0,150x2 − 450x

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Question 19
A manufacturer estimates that when q units of a certain commodity are produced, the total cost will be
C(x) rand where
q2
C(q) = + 80 000 − 104q.
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Answer the following questions:
(i) Use marginal analysis to determine the production level at which the cost will be a minimum.
(ii) Determine the minimum cost.

Choose the correct option:

[1] (i) production level: 1 300 (ii) minimum cost: R208,00.

[2] (i) production level: 77 (ii) minimum cost: R72 229,16.
[3] (i) production level: 1 300 (ii) minimum cost: R12 400,00.
[4] (i) production level: 2 600 (ii) minimum cost: R80 000,00.

Question 20
BrushPro is an one-man paint business owned by Banele. If x offices are painted per month, BrushPro’s
monthly profit, P , is given by the function

P (x) = −x3 + 27x2 + 132x + 2 970,

where 0 ≤ x ≤ 34. Use marginal analysis to determine the approximate change in BrushPro’s monthly profit
when the 23rd office is painted. The profit will

[1] decrease by approximately R57,00.

[2] increase by R8 294,00.
[3] decrease by approximately R132,00.
[4] increase by R8 388,00.

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