Exam 18: A Roadmap for Analyzing Data

Every spring semester, the School of Business coordinates with local business leaders a luncheon for graduating seniors, their families, and friends. Corporate sponsorship pays for the lunches of each of the seniors, but students have to purchase tickets to cover the cost of lunches served to guests they bring with them. Data on the number of guests each graduating senior invited to the luncheon from 500 graduating seniors last year were collected. Based on this information, which of the following will you construct to learn about the percentage of seniors who will bring at least one guest to a luncheon?

Private colleges and universities rely on money contributed by individuals and corporations for their operating expenses. Much of this money is put into a fund called an endowment, and the college spends only the interest earned by the fund. A recent survey of 8 private colleges in the United States collected information on the endowment amount. Based on this information, which of the following will you construct to learn about the mean endowment of all private colleges in the United States?

A Paso Robles wine producer wanted to forecast the cases of Merlot wine sold. The number of cases of merlot wine sold in a 28-year period was collected. Which of the following would be the most appropriate analysis to perform?

An agronomist wants to compare the crop yield of 3 varieties of chickpea seeds. She plants all 3 varieties of the seeds on each of 5 different patches of fields. She then measures the crop yield in bushels per acre. She has found out that the different varieties do have an impact on crop yield. Which of the following tests will be the most appropriate to find out which variety will produce the highest yield?

The superintendent of a school district wanted to predict the percentage of students passing a sixth-grade proficiency test. She obtained the data on percentage of students passing the proficiency test (% Passing), daily mean of the percentage of students attending class (% Attendance), mean teacher salary in dollars (Salaries), and instructional spending per pupil in dollars (Spending) of 47 schools in the state. She believed that holding everything else constant, instructional spending per pupil had a positive but decreasing impact on percentage. Which of the following would be the most appropriate analysis to perform?

A few years ago, Pepsi invited consumers to take the "Pepsi Challenge." Consumers were asked to decide which of two sodas, Coke or Pepsi, they preferred in a blind taste test. Pepsi was interesting in determining what factors played a role in people's taste preferences. One of the factors studied was the gender of the consumer. Data on the percentage of men and women depicting preference for Pepsi were collected. Which of the following tests will you use to find out if there is any difference in preference between the different gender groups?

To test the effectiveness of a business school preparation course, 8 students took a general business test before and after the course. Suppose the before and after exam scores are both normally distributed. Which of the following tests will be the most appropriate?

A physician and president of a Tampa Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) are attempting to show the benefits of managed health care to an insurance company. The physician believes that certain types of doctors are more cost-effective than others. To investigate this, the president obtained independent random samples of 20 HMO physicians from each of 4 primary specialtiesGeneral Practice (GP), Internal Medicine (IM), Pediatrics (PED), and Family Physicians (FP)and recorded the total charges per member per month for each. A second variable which the president believes influences total charges per member per month is whether the doctor is a foreign or US medical school graduate. To investigate this, the president also collected data on 20 foreign medical school graduates in each of the 4 primary specialty types described above. So information on charges for 40 doctors (20 foreign and 20 US medical school graduates) was obtained for each of the 4 specialties. Which of the following tests will be the most appropriate to find out if the primary specialty and the origin of medical school degree interact to affect the charges?

Data were collected on the amount of detergent used in gallons in a month by 25 drive-through car wash operations in Phoenix. You can use a time-series plot to present this information.

An agronomist wants to compare the crop yield of 3 varieties of chickpea seeds. She plants all 3 varieties of the seeds on each of 5 different patches of fields. She then measures the crop yield in bushels per acre. Which of the following tests will be the most appropriate to find out if the different patches is advantageous in reducing the random error?

A powerful women's group has claimed that men and women differ in attitudes about sexual discrimination. A group of 50 men (group 1) and 40 women (group 2) were asked if they thought sexual discrimination is a problem in the United States. Of those sampled, 11 of the men and 19 of the women did believe that sexual discrimination is a problem. Which of the following tests will you use to find out if there is any difference in attitudes about sexual discrimination?

A major Blu-ray rental chain is considering opening a new store in an area that currently does not have any such stores. The chain will open if there is evidence that more than 5,000 of the 20,000 households in the area are equipped with Blu-ray players. It conducts a telephone poll of 300 randomly selected households in the area and finds that 96 have Blu-ray players. Which of the following tests will be the most appropriate?

An economist is interested to see how consumption for an economy (in $ billions) is influenced by gross domestic product ($ billions) and aggregate price (consumer price index). Annual data from 30 years were collected. Which of the following would be the most appropriate analysis to perform?

Are Japanese managers more motivated than American managers? A randomly selected group of 100 managers from each group were administered the Sarnoff Survey of Attitudes Toward Life (SSATL), which measures motivation for upward mobility. The mean and standard deviation of the SSATL scores were computed. The standard deviations of the SSATL scores suggest that the standard deviation from the two groups is very different. Which of the following tests will be the most appropriate?