STATISTICS PROBLEMS

1. What is the probability of randomly selecting the letter T in the word COMPUTE?
a. 1/6 b. 1/7 c. 6/7 d. 7/1

2. What is the probability of selecting a vowel in the word COMPUTE?

a. 1/7 b. 4/7 c. 3/7 7/1

3. Which of the following statements is not correct in constructing histograms?

a. All class intervals should be of equal widths.
b. The bars of the histograms are centered over the class marks or midpoints.
c. The first and the last classes should be open-ended o account for extreme points.
d. There should be no spaces between bars.

4. Ben will be given 4 chances to pick up toys at random from a gift bag containing Pinoy
superhero toys: 2 Captain Barbel, 3 Darna and 2 Panday. How many possible collections
of toys can he pull out?
a. 48 b. 840 c. 35 d. cannot be determined

5. Standard deviation of scores in a statistics exam is 10. However, since the exam was
very difficult, the statistics teacher later decided to give a bonus of 5 points to all the
students. What is the standard deviation of the new scores?
a. 10/25 b. 10 c. 15 d. 25

6. In a student body election, where 1800 students voted, the votes for Vi, Guy and Glo are
in the ratio of 4:3:2. If they were the only candidates and none of the 1800 students cast
more than 1 vote, how many vote did Guy received?
a. 300 b. 400 c. 600 d. 900

7. Which of the following is not correct? A frequency distribution can be presented as

a. an estimate c. scatter plot
b. a histogram d. a stem-leaf display

8. In clinical trials 0f a new skin astringent, 100 women experienced 1st degree burns,
nausea or both. Of these, a total of 35 women experienced 1st degree burns and 25
experienced both burns and nausea. How many experienced nausea?
a. 25 b. 65 c. 90 d. cannot be determined

9. Which of the following statements is true about a truly normal frequency distribution?
a. The median is always the same as the standard deviation.
b. The mean is never the same as the mode.
c. The mode is never the same as the median.
d. The mean is always the same as the median.

10. The Philippine National Statistics Office reports the following median family income (in
thousand pesos) by income decile for the year 2003. An estimate of the 1st quartile is

DECILE 1st 2nd 3RD 4TH 5TH 6TH 7TH 8TH 9TH 10th

MEDIAN 28 43 55 69 86 106 134 175 242 419

INCOME

a. P 43,000 b. P 55,000 C. P 28,000 d. P 69,000

11. Which of the following can be attributed only to sample?

a. Range b. Estimate C. Standard Deviation d. Parameter

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 12. Fill in the missing words to this quote: “Statistical inference methods may be described as
methods for drawing conclusions about______ based on _______ computed from
the_______ “.
a. population, parameter, sample c. parameter, statistics, sample
b. statistics, parameter, sample d. population, statistics, sample

13. You have calculated the correlation coefficients between two variables to be -.95. This
would indicate
a. a strong linear relationship c. no relationship
b. a weak linear relationship d. no linear relationship

14. A candy company claims that 10% of its candies are blue. A random sample of 200 of
these candies is taken, and 16 are found to be blue. Which of the following tests would be
the most appropriate for establishing whether the candy company needs to change its
claim?
a. a marked pair t-test c. two-sample proportion z-test
b. one-sample proportion z-test d. chi-square test of association

15. Consider the set of test scores from the last year’s Phil. Statistics Quiz elimination round.
Supposing that we double all the scores, which of the following sample statistics will be
changed? The mean, the median, or the standard deviation
a. only the mean c. only the mean and median
b. only the median d. the mean, median and standard deviation

16. In a certain city, the distribution of the 1st and 2nd-born children of 2 children
families by gender is shown below

Second born
First born Female Male Total

Female 540 512 1052

Male 492 456 948
Total 1032 968 2000

What is the probability that a family with 2 children selected at random in this city has
children of the same gender?
a. 0.500 b. 0.270 c. 0.498 d. 0.288

17. The Phil. National Statistics office reports the following median family (in thousand pesos)
by income deciles for the year 2003.

DECILE 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th
MEDIAN
INCOME
28 43 55 69 86 106 134 175 242 419

Approximately what percentage of the families have incomes between P55,000 and P
134,000?
a. 30% b. 40% c. at least 75% d. 95%

18. Let us define a new statistics as the distribution between the 70th sample percentile and
30th sample percentile. This new statistic would give us information concerning
a. central tendency c. skewness
b. variability d. symmetry

19. Workplace accidents are categorized in 3 groups: minor, moderate and severe. The
probability that a given accident is minor is 0.5, that it is moderate is 0.4, and that it is

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 severe is 0.1. Two accidents occur independently in one month. Calculate the probability
that neither accident is severe nor at most one is moderate.
a. 0.25 b. 0.40 c. 0.45 d. 0.65

20. The central limit theorem is important in statistics because

a. it tells us that large samples do not need to be selected.
b. it tells that when it applies, the samples that are drawn are always randomly
selected.
c. It enables reasonably accurate problems to be determined for events involving the
sample average when the sample size is large regardless of the data.
d. none of the above

21. The average time that it takes for a person to experience pain relief from aspirin is 25
minutes. A new ingredient is added to help speed up pain relief. Let U denote the average
time to obtain pain relief. A study is conducted to verify if the new product is better.
Which of the following is the most appropriate null and alternative hypotheses for this
experiment.

a. Ho: U= 25 vs. Ha: U< 25

b. Ho: U< 25 vs. Ha: U= 25
c. Ho: U< 25 vs. Ha: U> 25
d. Ho: U= 25 vs. Ha: U> 25

22. Which of the following statements best describes statistical inference?

a. A decision, prediction or generalization about a sample based on information
contained in a population.
b. A statement made about a sample based on the measurements in that sample.
c. A set of data selected for a larger set of data
d. A decision, estimate, prediction or generalization about the population based on
information contained in a sample.

23. Which of the following statements about confidence interval is correct?

a. If the sample size is fixed, the confidence interval gets wider as we increase the
confidence the confidence coefficient.
b. If the population standard deviation increases, the confidence interval decreases in
width.
c. A confidence interval for a mean always contains the sample mean.
d. If the confidence coefficient is fixed, the confidence interval gets narrower as we
increase the sample size

24. You have measured the systolic blood pressure of a random sample of 25 employees of
NSO. A 95% confidence interval for the mean systolic blood pressure for the employees
is computed to be (122, 138). Which of the following statements gives a solid
interpretation of this interval?

a. About 95% of the sample of 25 employees has a systolic blood pressure between
122 and 138.
b. About 25% of all NSO employees has a systolic blood pressure between 122 and
138.
c. If the sampling procedure were repeated many times, the approximate 95% of the
resulting confidence interval would contain the mean systolic blood pressure of
all NSO employees
d. The probability that the sample mean falls between 122 and 138 is equal to 0.95

25. Ben and Eddie were enrolled in different sections of the same statistics course. Both of
them scored 80% in the finals. However, Eddie’s teacher said that he is in the 60th

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 percentile in his section while Ben is in the 80th percentile. Which of the following is
correct?
a. Ben’s section generally performed better on the test than Eddie’s section.
b. A person at the 30th percentile in Eddie’s class will be at the 40th percentile in
Ben’s section.
c. A person at the 30th percentile in Ben’s section will be at the 40th percentile in
Eddie’s section.
d. Individuals in Ben’s section generally scored lower on the test than those in
Eddie’s section.

26. The sample mean is an unbiased estimator for the population mean. This means that
a. The sample mean always equals the population mean.
b. The average sample mean, over all possible samples equals the population mean.
c. The sample mean is always very close to the population mean.
d. The sample mean will only vary a little from the population mean.

27. Some descriptive statistics for a set of test scores that follow a normal distribution are
shown in the table below. For this test, a certain student has a standardized score of Z=
-1.2. What is the new score of this student?

Variable N Mean
score 50 1045.7
Variable Minimum Maximum
score 628.9 1577.1

a. 266.28 b. 779.42 c. 1008.02 d. 1083.38

28. Suppose the examination grades of a large group of statistics students are approximately
normally distributed with mean 70 and standard deviation 10. The instructor wishes to
award quality point grades1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 so that that the top 10% of the
students would get 1.0’s. What numerical grade should divide the 1.0’s and the 1.5’s? ( Z
– table needed)
a. 0.25 b. 0.40 c. 0.45 d. 0.65

29. What law in statistics states that if an experiment is repeated a large number of times, the
relative frequency of an outcome approach the probability of the outcome?
a. Law of Independent Segregation c. Law of Theoretical Probability
b. Law of Large Numbers d. None of these

30. This is a written record of a statistical survey of England ordered by William the
Conqueror. The survey, made in 1086, was an attempt to register the landed wealth of the
country in a systematic fashion, to determine the revenues due to the king. What is this?
a. Das Kapital c. Principia Mathematica
b. Domesday Book d. None of these

31. This is the analytic study of the hereditary probabilities of any organism.
a. Genetics c. Biometrics
b. Taxonomy d. None of these

32. There are 15 points on a plane. Given that no three points are collinear, how many
triangles can be formed from the plane?
a. 210 c. 455
b. 105 d. 273

33. Which of the following is true about the set:

{ 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10, 11, 11}

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 a. The mean is 9.2 c. The mode is 8.
b. The standard deviation is 2.53 d. The variance is 3.32

34. The MMDA reports that in the rainy season, there is an increase in the number of
recorded road accidents especially in Quezon City and Caloocan City. Which of the
following is the best conclusion about this report?
a. That the temperature of the rainy season tends to disrupt the psycho-motor control
of the drivers in Quezon City and Caloocan City.
b. That roads become more slippery, causing the increase of accidents.
c. That trailer trucks on those cities tend not to see signs when the rainy seasons
come.
d. That MMDA officers are much more efficient during the sunny days.

35. In a round table, 7 people are seated. If two people refuse to be replaced on their initial
seats, in how many ways can the round table be set-up?
a. 720
b. 120
c. 24
d. None of these

36. How do you call the graph of a cumulative frequency?

a. bar graph
b. frequency polygon
c. ogive
d. density graph

37. How many three-digit numbers which are divisible by 5 can be formed from the digits
from 0 to 9 if no repetitions are allowed?
a. 162 c. 180
b. 810 d. 200

38. How many three-digit numbers greater than 800 can be formed from the digits from 0 to
9, if a digit may be repeated?
a. 81 c. 200
b. 162 d. 100

39. On the average, the number of days that an institution is closing because of extreme rains
is 5. What is the probability that this institution would close for 4 days?
a. 0.1462 c. 0.1456
b. 0.1606 d. 0.1342

40. At what point on the plot of the cumulative frequency must the two ogives intersect?
a. at the mean frequency c. at the mode frequency
b. at the median frequency d. cannot be determined

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