Chapter Twenty-Six - Additional Resources

WHICH STATISTICS WOULD YOU USE?

1. What kind of data are the following (nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio):

Names of people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ranked data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sex of people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Age of people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Colour of eyes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Intelligence quotient (IQ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Score on a spelling test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Data on a rating scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Celsius temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Money in your bank account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1. An ice-cream shop has the possibility of using two different posters to know which increase in demand is higher: red-bean ice-cream. Which statistics would you use?
2. A group of 100 students voted for their favourite teacher, using a five point rating scale to rate each teacher (1 = very poor teacher ® 5 = excellent teacher). Which statistics could you use to find the most popular teacher?
3. A study was undertaken to see if there was any degree of association between the time at which a group of Form 5 boys woke up in the morning and the time that a group of Form 5 girls woke up in the morning. Which statistics could you use to find the degree of association between the two groups?
4. A real estate developer firm wants to test whether there are differences in the average price of a lot of a given size in the center of various Asian cities: Melbourne, Jakarta, Singapore, Shanghai and Osaka. Which statistics should be used?
5. Research was conducted to see if there was any statistically significant difference between the preferences expressed by Chinese boys, Chinese girls, Chinese women and Chinese men, for a particular location of swimming pool in Macau, using rating scales. Which statistics could you use to find the differences and where they lay?
6. Research was conducted to discover if there was any relationship between a school principal’s leadership style (as ascertained by a rating scale) and the achievement levels of the students. Which statistics could you use to discover such a relationship?
7. The Club Med company wants to investigate the quality performance of 4 of its resorts in Asia, and in order to take some action wishes to find out which ones are performing better or worse than others. How could Club Med approach this study?
8. Imagine that you were asked to explore the variation of total exports from Macau to Europe against the fluctuation of the MOP-EUR exchange rate. What statistics would you use? What if you were also asked to consider the cost of import goods from various origins, as for example from China.
9. A study was undertaken to find which was the most popular out of twelve casinos in Macau, using a multiple choice questionnaire in which respondents were asked to indicate only one choice of their favourite casino. Which statistics could you use to find the most popular casino?
10. A study was proposed to discover whether there was any difference between the results of boys on a mathematics test and the results of girls on a mathematics test. Which statistics could you use here?
11. A kindergarten school is interested to know the extent that the number of applications received every year is function of national birth rate and parents income. What type of statistics would you perform to investigate the problem?
12. A telecommunications company wants to develop a customer satisfaction index based on 4 criteria: information provided to customers, technical assistance, tariffs, and customer complaints. What kind of statistics would you suggest to the company? Why?
13. A study was undertaken to find which was the most popular out of twelve casinos in Macau, using a multiple choice questionnaire in which respondents were asked to indicate three choices of their favourite casinos, putting them in rank order, 1 = most favourite, 2 = second favourite and 3 = third favourite. Which statistics could you use to find the most popular casino?