SAMPLE EXAM PAPER

The Polytechnic
Faculty of Applied Sciences

Department of Mathematics and Statistics

End of Semester One Examinations

Bachelor of Business Administartion (Generic & Marketing)

STA–214: Fundamentals of Statistics

DATE: ______________________ TIME: 8:00 – 11:00

Instructions

1. This paper contains 8 printed pages, including the cover page. Please check.

2. Answer any 4 questions.

3. Each question carries 25 marks.

4. Please write clearly, legibly and show all your working.

5. Begin each question on a fresh page.

6. Use of non-programmable calculators is allowed.

7. All graphs must be plotted on graph papers/sheets.

8. Final answers must be given correct to 2 decimal places.

9. Cheating in any way is not allowed.

(Do not turn over the paper until you are told to do so)
Question 1

a) State whether data for each of the following variables is qualitative or quantitative
and indicate its scale of measurement
i. Gender (2 marks)
ii. Socioeconomic classes (2 marks)
iii. Marital Status (2 marks)
iv. Litres of Petrol (2 marks)
v. Temperature (2 marks)
b) Suppose you have an organisation with 500 employees, and you wish to examine the
relationship between gender and job satisfaction
i. What is the most suitable sampling technique to obtain a sample? (1 mark)
ii. Why is it the most suitable sampling technique? (3 marks)
iii. What other variable can affect job satisfaction? (1 mark)
c) Speedy Swift is a package delivery service that serves the greater Blantyre area. To
maintain customer loyalty, one of Speedy Swift’s performance objectives is on-time
delivery. To monitor its performance, each delivery is measured on the following
scale: early (package delivered before the promised time), on-time (package delivered
within 5 minutes of the promised time), late (package delivered more than 5 minutes
past the promised time). Speedy Swift’s objective is to deliver packages either early
or on-time

Speedy Swift collected the following data for a sample of 30 packages:

On-time On-time Early On-time Early Early
Early On-time Early Early Early Early
Early On-time Early On-time On-time Early
Early Early Late On-time Early On-time
On-time Late Late On-time Late On-time

i. Construct a frequency table for delivery performance for the sample. (3 marks)
ii. Construct a bar chart for the delivery performance for the sample. (4 marks)

iii. Looking at the data, do you think Speedy Swift’s customers were satisfied with
the performance? If so, why? (3 marks)

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Question 2

An insurance agent has 200 claims (x in K’000) filed by car owners which range from K209
to K1,667 and all claims exceeding K1,000 are listed below:
1063 1068 1072 1076 1092 1094 1110 1125 1141 1172 1176
1194 1196 1213 1246 1270 1275 1280 1343 1440 1489 1493
1509 1612 1667
The claims data give these summaries: n  200 ; ∑ 𝑥 = 130,646; ∑ 𝑥 2 = 106,375,176 and
the boxplot

a)
i. Give an approximate value for the median, and calculate the mean, µ, for all the 200
claims (to the nearest thousand Kwacha). (4 marks)
ii. Give an approximate value for the inter-quartile range, and calculate the standard
deviation, σ (to the nearest thousand Kwacha). (6 marks)
iii. Find the interval (µ ± 2σ) and calculate the percentage of the claims which are not
included in the interval (µ ± 2σ). (7 marks)
iv. Show whether the value 𝑥 = 𝐾1,493 is a probable outlier. (3 marks)
b) A charitable organisation decided to give old age pension to people over sixty years
of age. The scales of pension were fixed as follows:

Age Group 60 - 65 65 - 70 70 - 75 75 - 80 80 - 85 85 - 90 90 – 95

Pension / Month (K’000) 100 120 140 160 180 200 220

If the total pension paid per month in various age groups are:
Age Group 60 - 65 65 - 70 70 - 75 75 - 80 80 - 85 85 - 90 90 - 95

Total Pension / Month (K’000) 700 600 840 800 720 600 440

Calculate the average amount of pension paid per month per head (5 marks)

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Question 3

a) Under what condition is the addition rule of probability applicable? (2 marks)

b) In a lottery game, three numbers are randomly drawn using a computer system with
possible outcomes ranging from 1 to 50.
i. How many arrangements are possible? (2 marks)
ii. How many different groups of winning numbers are possible? (3 marks)
c) A company is creating three new divisions. If seven managers, two of whom are
females, are eligible to be appointed head of a division. Assuming that assignment is
not important,
i. in how many ways can the three new heads be appointed? (2 marks)
ii. what is the probability that at least one female is appointed? (5 marks)
d) Three-quarters of employees are male, of whom 40% have been promoted before. For
females, 30% have been promoted. If an employee is selected at random, what is the
probability that the person is female given that the person has been promoted before?
(6 marks)
e) A company decides to tender for 3 contracts; A, B and C. The probability that it will
obtain contract A is 0.5, contract B is 0.4 and contract C is 0.3. The contracts are
awarded independent of one another. Calculate the probability that it will get exactly
one contract. (5 marks)

Question 4

a) The table below is a distribution of weekly earnings of 100 employees

Weekly Earnings (K,000) Number of Employees
31 to 40 9
41 to 50 16
51 to 60 33
61 to 70 20
71 to 80 14
81 to 90 8

Plot a less-than ogive (cumulative frequency curve) and use it to estimate the 65th
percentile for the distribution. (7 marks)

Question 4 continues

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b) Below is a less than cumulative frequency distribution of grades obtained by students
in a statistics exam:
Class upper boundary (%) Cumulative frequency
49.5 2
59.5 3
69.5 9
79.5 24
89.5 36
99.5 40

i. Construct a frequency distribution showing the class boundaries (upper and lower)
and frequencies. (3 marks)
ii. Calculate the 5th decile for the distribution of the grades. (5 marks)
iii. Given that the distribution has a variance of 141.28(%), and ∑ 𝑥 = 3,040; find the
Pearson’s 2nd coefficient of skewness. (5 marks)

c) The following table gives the distribution of daily wages of 900 workers. However,
the frequencies of the classes 40 - 50 and 60 - 70 are missing. If the median of the
distribution is K 59.25, find the missing frequencies. (5 marks)

Wages (K’000) 30 – 40 40 - 50 50 – 60 60 - 70 70 - 80

No. Of Workers 120 ? 200 ? 185

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Question 5
a) The data below shows the percentage distribution of income among employees of a
local company.
% of employees Gross income earned (%) Net income earned (%)
Highest 1 17 10
4 21 14
5 15 12
15 22 24
25 19 23
Lowest 50 6 17

i. On the same graph, plot Lorenz curves of gross income and net income. (9 marks)
ii. Comment on the effect of tax on the distribution of income among the employees.
(2 marks)

b) The table below shows deposits (in K’million) made through a rural bank mkhonde.
Month, 2017 Actual deposits 12-months moving totals
July 5 46
August 1 44
September 4 49
October 10 48
November 3 51
December 6 49
January 8 53
February 1 54
March 4 55
April 1 53
May 8 56
June 3 54
i. Represent the data on a Z-chart. (Use a scale of 1 box:K10 million on the y-axis)
(8 marks)
ii. Interpret the three values corresponding to October, 2017 on the z-chart. (6 marks)

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Question 6

a) The Catering and Conference Manager at the Amaryllis Hotel Blantyre wishes to
carry out a survey of the guests who will be at the hotel on the night of August 25,
2019. Guests are allocated rooms in one of the three ‘locations’; Terraces, Towers, or
Suites. Two methods of selecting a sample of the guests, who will be asked to
complete a short questionnaire, have been proposed.

Method 1: Take a simple random sample of ‘locations’, and then take a simple
random sample of guests from the selected locations.

Method 2: Considering each ‘location’ to be a single group of guests, then taking a

simple random sample of guests from each of the three locations.

i. Give the technical name of each of the proposed sampling methods. (2 marks)

ii. For each sampling method 1 and 2, state the conditions which would help ensure
that the method works well. (4 marks)

iii. For each sampling method, state one advantage of using it for this survey. (2 marks)

b) In the context of part (a), the manager decides against self-completing questionnaire
in favor of calling the guests a few days after checking out. Give one reason why
might telephone interviews be less successful for the hotel in some circumstances.
(2 marks)

c) For 31 consecutive days, the number of vehicles passing through Bunda Police
checkpoint between 6:00 am and noon were as shown below:

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10
355 432 516 467 394 218 175 428 523 419

Day 11 Day 12 Day 13 Day 14 Day 15 Day 16 Day 17 Day 18 Day 19 Day 20
384 439 224 156 518 556 494 369 388 251

Day 21 Day 22 Day 23 Day 24 Day 25 Day 26 Day 27 Day 28 Day 29 Day 30
208 476 381 464 508 529 253 184 394 475

Day 31
508

Question 6 continues

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 i. Draw a stem-and-leaf diagram of the data with the stem being the hundreds value
and the leaf the tens value (and the last digit not used/ignored). (3 marks)

ii. Use your stem-and-leaf diagram to construct a box-plot. (7 marks)

d) The figure below shows the time, in days, it took the Auditor General’s office to audit
regional government offices.

i. Name the figure. (1 mark)

ii. How many offices where audited in less than 23 days each? (2 marks)

iii. Find the mode of the audit times. (1 mark)

iv. How long did the fastest audit take? (1 mark)

END OF QUESTION PAPER

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