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SSR201 Tutorial 2 Handout

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6 views2 pages

SSR201 Tutorial 2 Handout

Uploaded by

morkehgregory
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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SSR201 Basic Statistics November 2024

Tutorial 2
Data and Averages
1. Which of the following lists contains only continuous variables?
a. Gender; the time someone has been in prison; party voted for at last election
b. Average earnings; the time someone has been in prison; UK unemployment rate
c. Average earnings; religion; teenage pregnancy rate in Southampton
d. Gender; religion; party voted for at last election

2. What is wrong with the second sentence in the following statement? (Assume that the
first sentence is true and by ‘average’ the writer had in mind the mean):
“In 1961, the average number of children born to an Australian woman was at its highest level
since reliable records began in the 1920s, at 3.55. This means that women were statistically
more likely to have four children than any other number.”
Sydney Morning Herald, 8 February 2004

3. Is the second sentence in the following statement true, if the ‘average’ is the mean?
“The average age for boys and girls to lose their virginity has fallen to 16. This means that as
many people lose it under 16 as over.”
The Independent, 20 November 2003

4. At a postnatal care centre, a nurse recorded the weights of children under one year in
kilograms as follows
6 7 11 12 9 8 6 8 8 9 8 10 13 7 5 3 8 7 4 5

a. Calculate the mean and the median.


b. What do the mean and median suggest about the distribution of the weight of children
in this population?
c. What is the mode?
d. Why is the median a better representation of skewed data than the mean?

1
SSR201 Basic Statistics November 2024

5. A manufacturing company produces three types of parts. The time (in hours) taken to
produce one unit of each type is as follows:
Part A: 2 hours
Part B: 3 hours
Part C: 6 hours
a. What is the geometric mean of the production times?
b. What is the harmonic mean of the production times?
c. A student claims that the geometric and harmonic means are always less than or
equal to the arithmetic mean. Is the student's claim true? Explain your reasoning.

6. The table below shows the weekly rent paid by UCC students in hostel accommodation
in GHC. Assuming a uniform distribution within each of the bands shown, what is the
estimated mean rent?

Rent Paid in GHC Number of Respondents


Less than 25 666
25 to 49.99 701
50 to 74.99 770
75 to 99.99 127
100 to 149.99 14
Total 2278

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