Addis Ababa Science and Technology University

College of Natural and Social Sciences

Probability and Statistics Division
Probability and statistics
Worksheet I
1. Explain the difference between the term statistics in singular and plural sense.
2. Explain the difference between descriptive statistics and inferential statistics by example
3. Explain the meaning of the following terms and give examples
a. Quantitative variable c. Qualitative variable
b. Discrete variable d. Continuous variable
4. Briefly explain the terms: population, sample, sampling frame, statistic and parameter.
5. Consider the set of all students enrolled for Introduction to Statistics course in this semester
at AASTU. Suppose you are interested in the current grade point averages (GPA’s) of this
group.
a) What is the population?
b) What is the variable of interest?
c) Suppose you determine the GPA of every member of the group. What would this
represent: a census or a sample?
d) Suppose you determine the GPA of some members of the group. What would this possibly
represent: a census or a sample?
e) Suppose the average GPA of a sample of 20 students is 2.55. Is this figure a parameter or a
statistic?
6. A study group is interested in estimating the average monthly income of 2000 employees. It
decides to select a random sample of 70 female and 130 male employees using proportional
allocation. Identify:
a) type of sampling method used d) The sample
b) the variable of interest e) The possible sources of data collection
c) the population
7. Identify each of the following variables as quantitative or qualitative. For those which are
quantitative, identify them further as continuous or discrete.
a) Weight of adult females e) Times for swimmers to complete a
b) Street addresses in Addis Ababa 50-meter race
c) Years of professional experience of f) Number of persons in a family
employees g) Monthly phone bills
d) Number of courses offered to h) Marital status of people
students in AASTU in this semester i) Length of frog jump
8. Distinguish between primary and secondary data. What are their sources?
9. The price of 20 items (to the nearest Birr) is given below:
46 38 42 54 38 62 48 60 42 54
60 51 67 43 46 47 53 46 38 51
a) Construct a grouped frequency distribution. Use the smallest value as the lower class
limit of the first class.
b) Determine the class boundaries and the class marks.
c) Construct the relative frequency distribution.
d) Prepare a histogram for your grouped frequency distribution and superimpose the
frequency polygon on it.
10. A company has 25 vehicles. The table below shows the summary of annual fuel consumption (in
thousands of liters) of the vehicles.
a) Find: How many of the vehicles consumed:
(i) at least 3950 liters? (ii) less than 4950 liters?

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 (iii) at least 1950 liters but less than 5950 liters?
b) What percent of the vehicles consumed
(i) less than 2950 liters? (ii) at least 4950 liters?
11. The following data is the distribution of the monthly expenditure of a certain family. Prepare a
pie chart.
Food 360 birr
Education and health 180 birr
Clothing 90 birr
Housing 180 birr
Others 270 birr
12. The following data is on the annual sales (in millions of liters) of LPG, diesel oil and
kerosene of a certain petrol station for the years 2001 - 2003.

2001 2002 2003

LPG 20 24 28

Diesel oil 12 18 16

Kerosene 8 8 10

Construct: (a) A simple bar chart for the (b) A multiple bar chart
total annual sales. (c) A component bar chart
13. Consider the following diagram representing the data on the number of computers available
by brand in a certain computer training center. The total number of computers in the center is
60.
a) Find the number of Compaq models.
b) If 6 of the computers are Acer, find the
angle of that sector.
c) Find the number of computers that are
neither Acer nor Toshiba.

14. On a particular Wednesday the sales of sugar from a super market consisted of 250 large
packets, 210 medium and 225 small packets. The mass of sugar in a large packet is 1.5 times
that in the medium packet and 2.5 times that in the small packet. Calculate the angles needed
to draw a pie chart representing the total mass of sugar sold in large, medium and small
packets.
15. In a biology experiment the lengths of 25 worms, measured to the nearest 0.1cm, were:
9.5 8.1 5.1 6.6 9.3 9.1 6.5 5.0 6.9 7.6 9.3 8.3 6.0
6.2 7.4 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.0 7.8 5.4 9.8 6.3 7.5 8.4
Construct a frequency distribution for the data by using Sturgess’ rule for the number of
classes. What do you think about the typical length of these worms?
16. The following data represent the time a tumor progression, measured in months, for 65
patients having a particular type of brain tumor called glioblastoma:
6, 5, 3,7, 10, 22, 9, 2, 16 , 3, 3, 11 , 9, 5, 14 , 11, 3, 1, 4, 6, 2, 7, 3 , 7 , 5, 4 ,8 , 2,
7, 13 , 16 , 15, 9, 4, 4, 2, 3, 9, 5, 11, 7, 5, 9, 3, 8, 9, 4, 10, 3, 2 , 7, 6, 9, 3, 5, 4,
6 , 4, 14 , 3, 6, 12 , 8, 12, 7

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 a) Represent the data by a histogram using both the relative and absolute frequencies and
compare the two histograms.
b) Make up a cumulative more than and cumulative less than frequency distribution for this
data set.
c) Which values of the distributions seems to be typical?
d) Plot the relative frequencies in a frequency polygon.
17. The following data set represents the scores on intelligence quotient (IQ) examinations of 40
sixth-grade students at a particular school:
114 122 103 118 99 105 134 125 117 106 109 104 111 127 133 111 117 103 120
98 100 130 141 119 128 106 109 115 113 121 100 130 125 117 119 113 104 108
110 102
a) Present this data set using histogram.
b) Which class interval contains the greatest number of data values?
c) Is there a roughly equal number of data in each class interval?
18.The state gas tax in cents per gallon for 25 states is given below. Construct a
grouped frequency distribution, a cumulative frequency distribution with 5
classes, and sketch histogram, frequency polygon and ogives. 7.5 16 23.5
17 22 21.5 19 20 27.1 20 22 20.7 17 28 20 23
18.5 25.3 24 31 14.5 25.9 18 30 31.5

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 Addis Ababa Science and Technology University
College of Natural and Social Sciences
Probability and Statistics Division
Probability and statistics
Worksheet II

1. The number of hours worked each week by a certain salesman over the past two months
are 52 45 37 54 46 40 42 12 Assuming these are sample data, calculate:
a) The mean working hour for a week e) The midrange
b) Median working hour f) The variance
c) The third quartile value g) The standard deviation
d) The range h) The cv
2. Child-Care Community Nursery can continue to be supported by the social services
office as long as the average annual income of the families whose children attend the
nursery does not exceed 3,600 Birr. The annual family incomes (Xi in Birr) of the
families of the attending children are:
4200 1524 2400 1800 3420 2220 3000 4800 4164 6000 5484
a) Does Child-Care qualify now for support?
b) If the answer to (a) is no, by how much must the average family income fall for them to
qualify? If the answer to (a) is yes, by how much can the average family income rise
and Child-Care still stay eligible?
c) Find the median annual family income for the data in question (2).
3. Consider the following grouped frequency distribution of the monthly water consumption
(to the nearest cubic meter) of 36 households in a certain city.
Monthly water consumption Number of households
1-3 6
4-6 12
7-9 10
10-12 5
13-15 3
a) Find the mean monthly consumption of water
b) Find the median consumption of water.
c) Find the most frequent monthly consumption of water
4. The average monthly salary of a group of 60 junior experts of a company is 800 Birr and
that of 20 senior experts working in the same company is 1200 Birr.

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a) Find the mean salary of all experts of the company.
b) If each expert gets an increment of 40 Birr, then what is the mean salary after
increment of: i) junior experts? ii) senior experts?
c) If each expert gets a 10 percent salary increment, then what is the mean salary after
increment of: i) junior experts? ii) senior experts?
5. The gross national product (GNP) (in millions of Dollars) of a certain country during the early
1980’s is given below. Year GNP
1981 1915
1982 2050
1983 2229
1984 2423
1985 2581
a) Calculate the average annual percentage growth in GNP over that period.
b) Estimate the GNP for 1986 (assume the same rate of increment).

If the geometric mean of two positive numbers is 16 and their arithmetic mean is 20, then
6.
find the two numbers.
7. The mean monthly salary of female employees of a company is 750 Birr, while the mean
monthly salary of male employees is 600 Birr. It is known that the mean monthly salary
of male and female employees combined is 690 Birr.
a) What is the ratio of the number of female employees to male employees?
b) What percentage of employees are females?

8. The mean grade of 100 students was calculated to be 65 with a standard deviation of 5. It
was later discovered that a grade of 19 was misread as 90. What are the correct mean and
standard deviation?

9. The sales (in hundreds of Birr) of two shops A and B were recorded for 30 days and the
following summary was drawn:
Shop A Shop B
Mean sales 45 50
Standard deviation of sales 5 5

Which shop has less variation in its sales?

10. An analysis of the weekly wages (in Birr) paid to workers in two textile firms A and B
gives the following results:
Firm A Firm B
Average weekly wage 54 48
Standard deviation of weekly wages 20 10
Fikru, who belongs to Firm A, gets a weekly wage of 56 Birr, while Abdissa, who
belongs to Firm B, receives a weekly wage of 50 Birr. Which of the two workers is
relatively paid better as compared to the workers in his firm?
11. Students’ ages in the regular daytime BA program and the evening BA program of a
certain university are described by the following two samples:
Regular BA 23 29 27 22 24 21 25 26 27 24
Evening BA 27 34 30 29 28 30 34 35 28 29
If homogeneity of age is a positive factor in teaching, use a measure of relative variability to
suggest which of the two groups will be easier to teach.

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12. An electronic company is considering a new type of training program for its employees.
Previously, it took an average of 29.75 hours to train each employee with a standard
deviation of 8.5 hours. The new training program, which is computer-aided, is believed to
reduce each employee’s training time by half. If the belief turns out to be correct, what is
the standard deviation in the training time after applying the new training program?

13. The mean life of 100-watt bulbs is 1050 hrs, and the standard deviation is 100 hrs.
a) If a new process adds 50 hrs to the life of each bulb, find the standard deviation and the
coefficient of variation.
b) If the life of each bulb is doubled, find the new standard deviation and coefficient of
variation.

14. Given and , find the mean and standard deviation. If each value
of the variable is multiplied by 5 and then increased by 12, find the mean and standard
deviation of the new set of values.

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 Addis Ababa Science and Technology University
College of Natural and Social Sciences
Probability and Statistics Division
Probability and statistics
Worksheet III

1. Explain the following to your friend

- sample space,
- outcome,
- event,
- mutually exclusive event,
- independent event

2. A box contains three marbles — one red, one green, and one blue. Consider an
experiment that consists of taking one marble from the box, then replacing it in the box
and drawing a second marble from the box. Describe the sample space. Repeat for the
case in which the second marble is drawn without first replacing the first marble.

3. An experiment consists of tossing a coin three times. What is the sample space of this
experiment? Which event corresponds to the experiment resulting in more heads than
tails?

4. Two dice are thrown. Let E be the event that the sum of the dice is odd, let F be the event
that the first die lands on 1, and let G be the event that the sum is 7.
Describe the events EF, E ∪ F, FG, EF c, EFG.

5. A class in probability theory consists of 6 men and 4 women. An exam is given and the
students are ranked according to their performance. Assuming that no two students obtain
the same score,
a) how many different rankings are possible?
b) If all rankings are considered equally likely, what is the probability that women
receive the top 4 scores?

6. A system is composed of four components, each of which is either working or failed.

Consider an experiment that consists of observing the status of each component, and let
the outcome of the experiment be given by the vector (x 1, x2, x3, x4) where xi is equal to 1
if component i is working and is equal to 0 if component i is failed.
a) How many outcomes are in the sample space of this experiment?
b) Suppose that the system will work if components 1 and 2 are both working, or if
components 3 and 4 are both working. Specify all the outcomes in the event that
the system works.
c) Let E be the event that components 1 and 3 are both failed. How many outcomes
are contained in event E?

7. A group of 5 boys and 10 girls is lined up in random order — that is, each of the 15!
permutations is assumed to be equally likely.
a) What is the probability that the person in the 4th position is a boy?
b) What about the person in the 12th position?
c) What is the probability that a particular boy is in the 3rd position?

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8. A committee of size 5 is to be selected from a group of 6 men and 9 women. If the
selection is made randomly, what is the probability that the committee consists of 3 men
and 2 women?

9. Fifty-two percent of the students at a certain college are females. Five percent of the
students in this college are majoring in computer science. Two percent of the students are
women majoring in computer science. If a student is selected at random, find the
conditional probability that
a) this student is female, given that the student is majoring in computer science;
b) this student is majoring in computer science, given that the student is female.
10. A total of 500 married working couples were polled about their annual salaries, with the
following information resulting.
Husband
<2,500 >2,500
Wife <2,500 212 198
>2500 36 54
If one of the couples is randomly chosen, what is
a) The probability that the husband earns less than $25,000;
b) The probability that the wife earns more than $25,000 given that the husband earns
more than this amount;
c) The conditional probability that the wife earns more than $25,000 given that the
husband earns less than this amount?
11. The annual rainfall (in inches) in a certain region is normally distributed with µ = 40, σ = 4. What
is the probability that in 2 of the next 4 years the rainfall will exceed 50 inches? Assume that the
rainfalls in different years are independent.
12. If each voter is for Proposition A with probability .7, what is the probability that exactly 7 of 10
voters are for this proposition?
13. Suppose that the average number of accidents occurring weekly on a particular stretch of a
highway equals 3. Calculate the probability that there is at least one accident this week.
14. If the average number of claims handled daily by an insurance company is 5, what proportion of
days have less than 3 claims? What is the probability that there will be 4 claims in exactly 3 of
the next 5 days? Assume that the number of claims on different days is independent.

15. It is known that disks produced by a certain company will be defective with probability .01
independently of each other. The company sells the disks in packages of 10 and offers a money-
back guarantee that at most 1 of the 10 disks is defective. What proportion of packages is
returned? If someone buys three packages, what is the probability that exactly one of them will be
returned?
16. A population has mean 128 and standard deviation 22.
a) Find the mean and standard deviation for samples of size 36.
b) Find the probability that the mean of a sample of size 36 will be within 10 units of
the population mean, that is, between 118 and 138.
17. Suppose the mean length of time that a caller is placed on hold when telephoning a
customer service center is 23.8 seconds, with standard deviation 4.6 seconds. Find the
probability that the mean length of time on hold in a sample of 1,200 calls will be
within 0.5 second of the population mean.
18. A hardware manufacturer produces bolts used to assemble various machines. Assume
that the diameter of bolts produced by this manufacturer has an unknown population
mean 𝝁 and the standard deviation is 0.1 mm. Suppose the average diameter of a simple

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 random sample of 50 bolts is 5.11 mm. construct 95% confidence interval for the
population mean 𝝁.

19. Last year the government made a claim that the average income of the American people
was $33,950. However, a sample of 50 people taken recently showed an average income
of $34,076 with a population standard deviation of $324. Is the government’s estimate
too low? Conduct a significance test to see if the true mean is more than the reported
average. Use an alpha = 0.01.

20. Your company sells exercise clothing and equipment on the Internet. To design the
clothing, you collect data on the physical characteristics of your different types of
customers. We take a sample of 24 male runners and find their mean weight to be 61.79
kilograms. Assume that the population standard deviation is σ = 4.5.
a) Calculate a 95% confidence interval for the mean weight of all such runners:
b) Based on this confidence interval, does a test of H0: µ = 61.3 kg Vs HA: µ ≠ 61.3 kg
reject H0 at the 5% significance level?
c) Carry out the hypothesis test in 3 to verify your answer:
21. Use the following data and fit a linear regression line to predict the price of used car. The
data is the about Asking price of some used Toyota Corollas advertised on newspaper on
October 2006.
Model Year Asking Price
2004 $10950
2003 $9400
2001 $8990
1998 $5800
1997 $5850
1994 $3800
1989 $1500

a) Write the equation of the fitted line

b) What is the slope of the line? What does it tell you?
c) What is the correlation coefficient value?
d) What proportion of the variability of the asking price explained by the age of the car?