Lab Assignment

Eco 172.1

Due Date: May 05, 2018 Total Marks: 65

1. Consumer Reports provided overall customer satisfaction scores for AT&T, Sprint,
T-Mobile, and Verizon cell-phone services in major metropolitan areas throughout the
United States. The rating for each service reflects the overall customer satisfaction
considering a variety of factors such as cost, connectivity problems, dropped calls, static
interference, and customer support. A satisfaction scale from 0 to 100 was used with 0
indicating completely dissatisfied and 100 indicating completely satisfied. The ratings for
the four cell-phone services in 20 metropolitan areas are as shown (Consumer Reports,
January 2009).
a. Consider T-Mobile first. What is the median rating? [2]
b. Develop a five-number summary for the T-Mobile service. [5]
c. How is the distribution for T-Mobile? Explain. [2]
d. Repeat parts (a) and (b) for the other cell-phone service. [15]
e. Calculate the standard deviation for all the mobile services. [8]
f. Which service should Consumer Reports recommend as being best in terms of overall
customer satisfaction? Why? [3]

2. At the beginning of 2009, the economic downturn resulted in the loss of jobs and an
increase in delinquent loans for housing. The national unemployment rate was 6.5% and the
percentage of delinquent loans was 6.12% (The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2009). In
projecting where the real estate market was headed in the coming year, economists studied
the relationship between the jobless rate and the percentage of delinquent loans. The
expectation was that if the jobless rate continued to increase, there would also be an increase
in the percentage of delinquent loans. The data below show the jobless rate and the
delinquent loan percentage for 27 major real estate markets.

a. Compute the correlation coefficient. Is there a positive correlation between the jobless
rate and the percentage of delinquent housing loans? What is your interpretation? [5]
b. Show a scatter diagram of the relationship between jobless rate and the percentage of
delinquent housing loans. What does the scatter plot tell about the relationship between
jobless rate and loan rate? [7]

3. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau provides the population by state in millions of people.
(The World Almanac, 2006).
a. Develop a frequency distribution, a percent frequency distribution, and a histogram.
Use a class width of 2.5 million. [4+2+5=11]
b. Discuss the skewness in the distribution. [3]
c. What observations can you make about the population of the 50 states? [4]

**Data for the material has been attached in the excel file.