Department of Management, UTSC

ECMB11H3Y Quantitative Methods in Economics I L01

Lecture 02 - In Class Exercise Summer 2012
Problem 1
The Co-op office at a department keeps track of the number of students placed with jobs each month. Below is a sample
of 6 months data. Determine the sample mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation for the number of students placed
in a month. Compute the first quartile. What is the number of hires in a month such that 2/3 of the months will have
placements below this value?
Month
students hired

Jan
3

Feb
2

Mar
4

Apr
2

May
6

June
0

Problem 2
(a) A marketing company requires that a student must have an average above 75% in their courses to get an interview.
Below are grades for a student, would the student get an interview?
Course
mark %

marketing finance
65
80

stats
70

accounting
92

O.B.
72

(b) Suppose the company views some courses as being more important than others and so assigns different weights to
them as shown below. Would the student get an interview?
Course
mark %
Weight

marketing finance
65
80
9
8

stats
70
7

accounting
92
3

O.B.
72
4

Problem 3
You are studying the salary of new business student graduates. The Alumni office provided you with the following
summary for a sample of business students that graduated in 2011. What is the mean starting salary? Standard deviation?
starting salary (in $1,000)
# of students

22 26
3

27 - 31
5

32 - 36
8

37 - 41
4

Problem 4
Five observations are taken for 2 variables.
x
4
6
11
3
16
y
50
50
40
60
30
(a) Does there appear to be a relationship between x and y?

(b) Compute the sample covariance and sample correlation coefficient, what conclusions can you draw?

Problem 5 case (Lets talk about it)

Employees in a certain department are given $1250 each year for professional development. The fund is placed in each
employees account and unused amount can be carried forward. The Director is worry that there is too much unused
money piling up in the accounts and the Vice President may stop giving money to the department for professional
development. The Director called a meeting with the 14 employees where he said the average amount of money in an
account is $3750 and there are 4 employees with over $7500. He said the $3750 implies that employees have not done
any professional development in 3 years so there is a problem. He did not want to provide the amounts in each account
because of confidential reasons.
Employee Bruce Lee having taken ECMB11 said unless we know how much money is in each accounts, we dont really
have enough info to determine if there is indeed a problem. Do you agree with Bruce? Explain. Bruce goes on to say
that the way to fix the problem may be very different if we knew how much was in each account. Provide 2 different
methods to fix this problem and explain how your method relates to the amounts in the accounts.
Assuming it is not possible to give the amounts in each individual accounts, what additional statistic would you suggest
the Director give and why?