Additional practice questions
6.1. Univariate statistics
Practice 1
1) a. State whether these data are discrete or continuous.
b. The number of sweets in a packet.
c. The heights of students in Grade 8.
d. The shoe sizes of the members of a pipe band.
e. The number of red cars in a parking lot.
f. The weights of kittens.
g. The marks obtained by Grade 7 in a science test.
h. The times taken for students to write their World Literature paper.
i. The weights of apples in a 5 kg bag.
j. The number of cm of rain each day during the month of April.
k. The number of heads when a coin is tossed 60 times.
l. The times taken for athletes to run a marathon.
m. The number of visitors to the Blue Mosque each day.
2) The data below gives the ages of 16 people working in an office.
17, 55, 45, 57, 61, 30, 26, 27, 46, 51, 40, 60, 38, 31, 42, 26
a. Draw a stem-and-leaf diagram for this data.
b. Use this stem-and-leaf diagram to find:
i. the median
ii. the mode
iii. the range.
3) The back-to-back stem-and-leaf diagram shows the thickness, in millimetres, of two
samples of 25 washers, produced by two different machines.
Which machine do you think produces thicker washers? Why?
a. What is the thickest washer produced by:
i. Machine A
ii. Machine B?
b. What is the thinnest washer produced by:
i. Machine A
ii. Machine B?
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c. Work out the median washer thickness for:
i. Machine A
ii. Machine B.
d. Work out the modal washer thickness for:
i. Machine A
ii. Machine B.
e. Do your answers to parts b, c, d and e support or cast doubt on your answer to
part a?
f. Of your answers to parts b, c, d and e, which do you think are the most reliable or
meaningful?
4) 15 students sit a Maths exam and a Geography exam. Their results are:
Maths: 43, 63, 45, 57, 82, 52, 50, 69, 71, 51, 48, 70, 54, 90, 66
Geography: 42, 65, 75, 88, 73, 88, 57, 60, 72, 97, 79, 80, 62, 91, 51
a. Draw a back-to-back stem-and-leaf diagram to show the students’ Maths and
Geography results.
b. Which exam do you think was easier? Why?
c. Work out the mean exam score for each subject.
Does this support your answer to part b?
5) A yacht club hosts an annual race. The numbers of people in each yacht are recorded
in the table.
Number of people Frequency
4 1
5 8
6 16
7 25
8 28
9 16
10 5
TOTAL 99
a. Find the median number of people in a yacht.
b. Find the upper and lower quartiles.
c. Draw a box and whisker graph to represent the information.
6) The box and whisker graph represents the ages of the teachers at Myschool High.
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a. Write down the age of the youngest teacher.
b. Write down the median age.
c. If 25% of the teachers are older than x, write down the value of x.
d. Find the interquartile range of the ages.
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Answers
Practice 1
1) a. Discrete b. Continuous c. Discrete d. Discrete
e. Continuous f. Discrete g. Continuous h. Continuous
i. Continuous j. Discrete k. Continuous l. Discrete
2) a.
b. i. 41 ii. 26 iii. 44
3) a. machine A as it has more washers over 3 mm
b. i. 4.8 mm ii. 4.8 mm
c. i. 1.6 mm ii. 1.7 mm
d. i. 3.5 mm ii. 2.8 mm
e. i. 2.5 mm ii. 2.8 mm
f. d is the only one that really supports the conjecture that machine A produces
thicker washers.
g. The median is the most reliable and meaningful.
4) a.
b. Geography looks easier as more students got higher marks.
c. Maths 60.7 Geography 72, yes
5) a. 7 b. 6; 8
c.
6) a. 22 b. 44 c. 53 d. 22
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