Nanyang Business School
AB1202 – STATISTICS AND ANALYSIS
Tutorial :6
Topics : Sampling and Statistical Inference
1. Random sampling requires the iid condition (independence and identical distribution of
sample points). Suppose now I am about to conduct a study about the GPA (of an AY) of
current NTU students, as a measure of learning outcome. I am doing it at the end of an AY.
Hence, each student will have at least one record on file.
Following the steps of statistical inference, I assume the GPA scores follow a particular
distribution in the population (NTU students) and then proceed to collect a random
sample (sample size n=30). Note that, in this study, a sample point is a student-AY
combination.
(1) For this to be a random sample, what do the distributions of the 30 students in this
sample have to satisfy in the context of this study?
(2) For my own convenience, I randomly selected 10 Year-3 NBS students as the subjects
of this study. Taken together, they will provide at least 30 data points (years 1—3).
How would this research design affect the validity of the independent and identical
distribution assumptions?
(3) If I randomly select 30 Year-3 NTU students and only get their Year-3 GPA scores as my
sample, what can be the issue from the perspective of iid?
2. Samples of monthly profits of a listed company are as follows (in $millions):
50, 64, 65, 80, 49, 63, 57
Find the following sampling statistics: minimum, maximum, mean, median, standard
deviation, and IQR.
3. Consider the “ChickWeight” dataset available in R.
(1) How to use R to count the number of chickens in the sample whose weights are less
than 100g? (Hint: combine the “indexing” method learned in W5 and the command
“length()”)
(2) What is the median weight of those chickens that were fed on Diet #2?
4. Consider the “USPersonalExpenditure” dataset available in R. This data set consists of
personal expenditures (in billions of US dollars) in the US, broken down into five categories;
food and tobacco, household operation, medical and health, personal care, and private
education for the years 1940, 1945, 1950, 1955 and 1960.
(1) Using this five-year data, calculate the sample mean of total annual personal
expenditures (hint: View and compare how the structure of “USPersonalExpenditure”
is different from that of “ChickWeight”)
(2) Using this five-year data, calculate the sample mean of annual personal expenditures on
Medical and Health
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Nanyang Business School
5. The following table shows the market capitalization (in $billions) and total return (in %) of
5 corporations.
Company Market capitalization Total return
A 150 -2
B 70 300
C 120 10
D 80 20
E 100 15
(1) Calculate the sample mean and the sample median for market capitalization
(2) Calculate the sample mean and the sample median for total return
(3) Calculate the sample standard deviation and the sample IQR for total return and
market capitalization.
6. Consider the following five-point summary that was obtained from a data set with 200
observations.
Min 1st Quartile Median 3rd Quartile Max
(Q1) (Q3)
34 54 66 78 98
(1) Interpret Q1 and Q3.
(2) Calculate the interquartile range.
(3) Determine whether any outliers exist.
(4) If we want to construct a boxplot based on the information in table, determine the
values of the lower limit and upper limit.
7. The figure below contains the boxplots of daily closing prices of major European stock
indices between 1991 and 1998.
Which index has the highest median? Highest IQR? Lowest upper limit? Lowest maximum?
