STATS 2MB3: Statistical Methods and Applications Winter 2013

Assignment #1 Due date: 3:30 PM on Friday January 18, 2013

NOTES: (i) Solution papers to assignments should be dropped by the due date in lockers C82 (A - H), C83 (I - R) and C84 (S-Z) located in the ground level of Hamilton Hall, next to HH/105. (ii) Please make sure your solutions are readable, in sequential order and each part properly labeled. Leave a blank line or two between parts. Please write your NAME and STUDENT NUMBER on every page. (iii) All plots and tables should be included in the question/part they belong to, DO NOT APPEND THEM at the end of your paper. (iv) To be fair to all, no late assignments will be accepted.

Problem 1. Book (8th edition), page 24, #12. Problem 2. Book (8th edition), page 25, #20. Problem 3. Book (8th edition), page 34, #34. Problem 4. Book (8th edition), page 43, #44. Problem 5. Baseball Salary Data. Load the Baseball Salary Data posted in the course webpage into R. (a) Calculate in R the smallest salary, largest salary, sample mean, sample median and sample standard deviation. Report the R code and the output. (b) Make and report a histogram of the data in R. Comment on the type and extent of asymmetry, if any, in the distribution of the data. (c) Based on your knowledge of continuous distributions from STATS 2D02, suggest a particular distribution that you may consider appropriate to describe the Baseball Salary Data. Give name and probability density function including any unknown parameters. Problem 6. A Touch of Math. Represent the observations in a sample of size n by x1 , x2 , ..., xn . (a) Prove that x(1) x x(n) , 1

where x(1) and x(n) are the smallest and largest observations in the sample, respectively. (b) Prove that
n

(xi x ) = 0.
i=1

(c) The sample variance was dened as

n 1 (xi x )2 s = n 1 i=1 2

Prove the following short-cut for calculating the sample variance: 1 s = n1

2 n

2 . x2 i nx
i=1

(d) For a given data set x1 , x2 , ..., xn , the variance around a point a can be dened as
n 1 s (a) = (xi a)2 . n 1 i=1 2

Derive the value of a in terms of the data observations that minimize s2 (a). Problem 7. EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING: Duration of Telephone Calls. Examine the most recent report on your long-distance telephone calls (or last 2 reports) from your telephone service provider. If you do not have one, use your familys or your friends. We are interested in studying the length (in minutes) of the long distance calls. Do not include the dataset. (a) What are the experimental subjects here? What is the variable of interest? Is it qualitative or quantitative? (b) Load the data into R and compute the sample mean, median, range, variance and standard deviation for the length of your calls. Include R code and output. (c) Draw in R a dotplot of the length of your calls. Comment on the salient features you observe in the plot.

Suggested Problems #1 (Only for your practice, do not submit solutions).

Section 1.2: #10, #11, #13, #17, #19, #23 Section 1.3: #33, #35, #36, #39, #43 Section 1.4: #45, #47, #49, #51, #52, #59