SECTION A: MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

1. What is statistics?
a. Comparing Theory vs. Experimental
b. Measuring how far apart two sets of numbers are
c. Defining numbers
d. The study of data
2. Descriptive statistics investigate:
a. if a pie chart is more appropriate than a bar chart
b. whether coefficients are significant
c. the amount of variation within each variable
d. relationships among variables
3. How do you find the median?
a. Highest number + lowest number, divided by 2
b. List numbers from low to high, find middle number
c. Median
d. Highest number minus median
4. The mode is the:
a. Value that appears the most in a dataset
b. Average of all of the values in a dataset
c. Lowest value in a dataset
d. Standard deviation
5. A defined collection of individuals or objects about which
we want to draw conclusions
a. Sample
b. Survey
c. Population
d. Census
6. A numerical quantity measuring some aspect of a
population
a. Statistic
b. Parameter
c. Data
d. Survey
7. This word means the middle of the data
a. Mean
b. Mode
c. Median
d. Variance
8. A Quantitative Variable has numerical value. The
information collected is called what?
a. Numbers
b. Sample size
c. Numerical data
9. The ________ of a data set is the sum of the data entries
divided by the number of entries
a. Mean
b. Median
c. Mode
d. Range
10. How do you find the midpoint?
a. Highest number minus median
b. List numbers from low to high, find middle number
c. Median
d. Highest number + lowest number, divided by 2
11. Find the median 3, 5, 7, and 1
a. 1
b. 2
c. 3
d. 4
12. What is the value that lies in the middle of the data when
the data is ordered?
a. Mean
b. Median
c. Mode
d. Variance
13. How do you find range?
a. Find the middle
b. Add all the numbers and divide
c. It is the highest number
d. Subtract the highest and lowest value
14. The __________ of a class is the sum of the lower and
upper limits of the class divided by two
a. Interval
b. Cumulative frequency
c. Relative frequency
d. Midpoint
15. Identify the outlier for the given data? 23, 34, 27, 7, 30,
26, 28, 31, 34
a. 7
b. 23
c. 30
d. 27
16. What kind of graph is this?
 a. Histogram
b. Bar char
c. Line graph
d. Dot diagram
17. The data value that occurs the most
a. Mean
b. Mode
c. Median
d. Range
18. A data set contains only one outlier. Which statistical
measure will most likely remain the same if the outlier is
removed?
a. Mean
b. Mode
c. Median
d. Range
19. Mean is another word for
a. Median
b. Average
c. Standard deviation
d. Average
20. If the mean score for two different datasets is the same,
the standard deviation will necessarily be the same.
a. True
b. False
21. When a dataset has an even number of values, the
median is
a. The same as the mean of the entire dataset.
b. The mean of the highest and lowest values in the dataset
c. The mean of the two middlemost values in the dataset.
d. None of the above
22. Which answer best describes standard deviation?
a. Standard deviation is a measure of the spread of a dataset.
b. Standard deviation indicates how much individual values
vary from the mean.
c. Standard deviation helps scientists summarize how much
variation there is in a dataset or population.
d. All of the answers are correct.
23. If the mean score for two different datasets is the same,
the standard deviation will necessarily be the same.
a. True
b. False
24. Which of the following is true concerning the standard
deviation of a distribution?
a. A small standard deviation indicates a narrow clustering
 of values around a mean
b. A small standard deviation indicates a larger spread of
values around the mean
c. A large standard deviation indicates a narrow clustering
of values around the mean
d. A large standard deviation means that a lot of people
answered a particular question
25. If data is normally distributed, what percentages of
scores fall between one standard deviation below and one
standard deviation above the mean value?
a. 68.26%
b. 99.73%
c. 34.13%
d. 62.5%
26. The federal government of Somalia conducts a survey of
high school seniors concerning their plans for future
education and employment. One question asks whether
they are planning to attend a four-year college or
university in the following year. Fifty percent answer yes
to this question; that fifty percent is a
a. Parameter
b. Statistic
c. Variable
d. Data
SECTION B: CALCULATIONS

1. We’ve worked with data sets that list individual observations.

This simply means that for each value, you can see each
individual observation. For example, take the table below.

Observation Frequency
60 1
61 3
62 2
63 5
64 7
65 2
66 1

Calculate the following measures and interpret your result

a. Mean
b. Median
c. Mode
d. Range

2. In the below data, calculate the following measures:

Age Groups Frequency
0 - 10 40
 10 - 20 53
20 - 30 58
30 - 40 64
40 - 50 72
50 - 60 49
60 - 70 36
70 - 80 25

a. Mean
b. Median
c. Mode

3. Calculate the variance and standard deviation for the same

ungrouped data in question
3,5,9,10,33,12,4,5,7,8,2,0,12

4. A frequency distribution for the ages of students in a Library

class is given below.
x = age f = frequency fx
18 4 72
19 5
20 7
21 3
22 4
23 2
24 1

a) What is the shape of the distribution?

b) Fill in the missing values in the table and compute the
mean age of the students.
c) Which value, mean or median, is a better measure of the
center in this case. Explain

5. A health club is interested in knowing how many times a

typical member uses the club in a week. They decide to ask
every tenth customer on a specified day to complete a short
survey including information about how many times they
have visited the club in the past week.

6. A study is done to compare the extent of heart disease in

people who drink 1 to 2 alcoholic drinks per day to the extent
of heart disease in non-drinkers. The researcher is able to
 study 200 individuals of each type. Other factors that might
affect the extent of heart disease are smoking habits and
exercise habits. The smoking habits of the two groups of
people are similar, but those who drank generally exercised
less than the non-drinkers. In this study, what is the dependent
variable of this study?

7. A screening test for high blood pressure (a diastolic blood

pressure of 90mm Hg or higher) produced the following
results:

Test result Hypertension Hypertension Total

Present Absent

Positive 477 163 640

Negative 173 4687 4860
Total 650 4850 5500

a) What is the probability that a person who tests positive has

hypertension?
b) What is the probability that a person who tests negative has
hypertension?
c) Calculate PPV and NPV?
d) Interpret your result
1 Practice Questions on Descriptive biostatistics