ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS
Fundamentals to Biostatistics (Stat 4091) – Exercise I
1. For a hypothetical research situation below, identify the population and the
sample.
a) A private university desires to estimate the percentage of its students who
have full time jobs. You interview 50 of its students and ask whether they
hold full time jobs.
b) All persons in a Kebele are called by telephone and asked to name the
candidates that they favor for election to the Kebele leading committee.
c) On five different locations it took a lawyer 21, 26, 24, 22 and 21 minutes
to derive from her home to her midtown office.
2. Classify the following sentences as belonging to the area of descriptive statistics
or inferential statistics.
a) As a result of recent cutbacks by oil-producing nations, we can expect the
price of gasoline to double in the next year.
b) At least 5% of all killings reported last year in city X were due to tourists.
c) Of all patients who received this particular type of drug at a clinic Y, 75%
later developed significant side effect.
d) Adane concludes that his chance of passing the first year this academic
year is at least 80% based on the statistics that 75% of the freshmen passed
last year.
3. Classify each of the following first as qualitative or quantitative and second as
nominal (categorical), ordinal, interval or ratio measurements.
a) Times for swimmers to complete a 50-meter race
b) Months of the year Meskerm, Tikimit…
c) Socioeconomic status of a family when classified as low, middle and
upper classes.
d) Blood type of individuals, A, B, AB and O.

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 e) Pollen counts provided as numbers between 1 and 10 where 1 implies
there is almost no pollen and 10 that it is rampant, but for which the values
do not represent actual counts of grains of pollen.
f) Regions numbers of Ethiopia (1, 2, 3 etc.)
g) Quintals of wheat produced in Ethiopia last year
h) For 16 persons arrested for driving while intoxicated you record whether
they live in urban, suburban, or rural areas. Your raw scores are
Suburban Rural Rural Urban
Urban Suburban Rural Urban
Urban Suburban Urban Suburban
Rural Suburban Urban Urban
i) You observe 20 overweight persons and classify them as high, medium or
low physical activity levels. Your data are as follows.
Low Low High Medium
Medium Low Low Low
Low Low Medium Low
High Medium Low Low
Low Low Medium Medium
4. For each of the hypothetical research situations described identify the scale of
measurement and indicate whether the data are discrete or continuous.
a) Number of complaint letters received by a firm’s administrator
b) You measure the body lengths (in inches) of 10 full term infants as birth and
record the following:
17.5 19.5 17.5 19 20
21 18 18 19.5 10.75
c) Number of tomato’s on each plant in a field
d) Number of students taking a National Examination each year
e) Miles driven by city -bus drivers each day
f) Number of cartons of corn oil manufactured each day
g) Weights of newborn children at Black Lion hospital

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5. Find the class boundaries class marks and class widths for the following intervals.
a) 6-13 b) (-8)-(-1) c) 0.378 – 0.677 d) 68.99 – 88.97
6. Which of the diagrams is most appropriate for each of the following data set?
Draw the diagrams.
a) Students enrolled to a certain department from year 1 to 3

No. of students
Year Male Female
1 50 20
2 45 15
3 40 10
b) Net profit (in million birr) earned by different companies in 1980
Company Net profit
A 20
B -15
C 30
7. Construct a frequency distribution of weights of miniature poodles if the class
marks are 6.5, 8.5, 10.5, 12.5 and 14.5 kgs with corresponding frequencies 8, 12,
22, 17 and 3.
8. Present the following information in a suitable tabular form.
-In 1945 out of a total of 1750 workers, 1200 were members of trade union. The
number of women was 200 of which 175 did not belong to a trade union.
-In 1950, the number of union workers increased to 1580 of which, 1290 were
men and the number of non-union workers fell to 208 of which 180 were men.
-In 1955 there were 1800 workers of whom 1600 belonged to trade union.
9. The following frequency table is constructed from the heights of 80 plants
recorded in a certain biological research.
Classes Percent
59.0-60.4 10.00
60.5-61.9 13.75
62.0-63.4 21.25
63.5-64.9 26.25
65.0-66.4 15.00
66.5-67.9 10.00
68.0-69.4 3.75
100

a) Is the variable discrete or continuous?

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 b) Sketch the histogram of the data, the frequency polygon and the less than
ogive.
10. The following is the distribution of weights of 125 mineral specimen collected on
the field trip.
Weight No. of
(Grams) Specimen
0.0-19.9 19
20.0-39.9 38
40.0-59.9 35
60.0-79.9 17
80.0-99.9 11
100-119.9 3
120-139.9 2
125

i) If possible, find the number of specimen which weigh

a) at most 40.0 gram b) 40.0 gram or more c) Less than 40.0 gram
d) at least 120.0 gram e) Exactly 20.0 gram
ii) Draw an appropriate Diagram / Graph for the distribution.
11. Given below are raw data on ages of 40 employees of a certain organization.
Construct a frequency distribution including the class boundaries, class marks the
relative frequencies, the less than and more than cumulative frequencies using 8
classes.
62 58 53 27 30 31 26 34 49 47 48
41 50 61 40 47 41 43 50 45 43 32
37 31 35 38 29 65 58 43 44 41 37
27 62 65 36 42 63 50

12. The frequency distribution below shows the number of freshmen, sophomore,
juniors, and seniors who attended a workshop on job opportunities in the news
media. Construct a Pie Chart for the data.
Group Frequency
Freshmen, 18
Sophomore 12
Juniors 6
Seniors 4
40