RESEARCH METHODS

EXERCISE-I

DO THESE EXERCISES IN MS-EXCEL AND SPSS.

1 In a taste test, 250 people were asked to taste five different brands of beer and
to report which one they preferred. The results are stored in file beer.xls using
the codes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 to represent the preferences.
a. Draw the appropriate chart to represent the data.
b. What do the charts tell you about the sample of beer drinkers?

2. An analysis of female-owned small businesses was conducted. Among other

questions, the owners were asked to identify the type of business using the
following codes.

Business Code
Services 1
Retail/ wholesale/trade 2
Finance/insurance/real estate 3
Transportation/ communication 4
Construction 5
Manufacturing 6
Agriculture 7

The responses for 260 female-owned small businesses are stored in file
business.xls.
Draw a graph to summarize these data, and describe your findings.

3. The daily closing prices of a stock on the New York Stock Exchange for the
last 50 days were stored in the file stock.xls.
Draw the appropriate chart and describe what the chart tells you.

4. The retail prices of a gallon of gasoline for each of the past 20 days are stored
in chronological order in the file gasoline.xls.
a. Use a graphical technique to depict these data.
b. What have you learned about the price of gasoline?
5. Following data is showing how the value of exports in India has been changing
over time.

Value of Exports
Year
(in Rs. crores)

1985 11744
1986 10895
1987 12452
1988 15674
1989 20232
1990 27681
1991 32553
1992 44041
1993 53688
1994 49182

Draw a graph to summarize these data, and describe your findings.

6. Following is the data on Savings and Investments (as per cent to GDP) for four
years.

1993-94 1994-95 1995-96 1996-97

Gross Domestic
22.5 25.0 25.5 23.3
Savings(GDS)
Gross Domestic
23.1 26.1 27.2 24.6
Investment(GDI)

Draw a graph to summarize these data, and describe your findings.

7. Following is the data on Investment “On Different Heads under the Eighth Five
Year Plan”.

Proposed outlay
Items
(Rs. crores)

Agriculture 32025
Rural development 33386
Special area program 4500
Irrigation & flood control 23771
Energy 122356
Industry & Minerals 46889
Transport & Commu. 80798
Science, Tech. & Envir. 6287
Services 84088
Total 4,34,100

Draw a graph to summarize these data, and describe your findings.

8. Following table gives the sector-wise Distribution of GDP at Factor Cost (At
1980-81 prices and in Rs thousand crores)
Primary Secondary Tertiary
Years Total
Sector Sector Sector
1993-94 262 185 334 781

1994-95 276 202 358 836

1995-96 275 227 395 897

1996-97 299 242 423 964

1997-98 296 256 461 1013

Draw a graph to summarize these data, and describe your findings.

9. A manufacturer of light bulbs advertises that, on average,
its long-life bulb will last more than 5,000 hours. To test the claim, a statistician
took a r.s. of 100 bulbs and measured the amount of time until each bulb burned
out. The data stored in file bulb.xls.
a. If we assume that the lifetime of this type of bulb has approximately
normal distribution, can we conclude at 5% level of significance that the
claim is true?
b. What is the p-value of the test?
c. Also compute 95% confidence interval on the true mean life light bulbs
produced by a manufacturer.

10. During the last decade a number of institutions dedicated

to improving the quality of products and services in the United States have been
formed. Many of these groups annually give awards to companies that produce
high-quality goods and services. An investor believes that publicly traded
companies that win awards are likely to outperform companies that do not win
such awards. To help determine his return on investment in such companies he
took a r.s. of 50 firms that won quality awards the previous year and computed the
annual return had he invested. These data are stored in file service.xls. The
investor would like an estimate of the returns he can expect. A 95% confidence
level is deemed appropriate.

11. One important factor in inventory control is the variance of the daily demand for
the product. A management scientist has developed the optimal order quantity and
reorder point, assuming that the variance is equal to 250. Recently, the company
has experienced some inventory problems, which induced the operations manager
to doubt the assumption. To examine the problem, the manager took a sample of
25 daily demands and stored them in file inventory.xls. Can we conclude that the
variance in speeds exceeds 18 (mph) 2?

12. In a television commercial, the manufacturer of a toothpaste claims that more than
four out of five dentists recommend the ingredients in his product. To test that
claim, a consumer-protection group randomly samples 400 dentists and asks each
one whether he or she would recommend toothpaste that contained the
ingredients. The responses are 1 = No and 2 = Yes. The responses are stored in file
dentist.xls. Can the consumer group infer that the claim is true?

13. In order to determine the effect of advertising in the

Yellow pages, Bell Telephone took a sample of 40 retail stores that did not
advertise in the Yellow Pages last year but did so this year. The annual sales (in
thousands of dollars) for each store in both years were recorded and stored in file
page.xls.
a. Estimate with 90% confidence the improvement in sales between the two
years.
b. Can we infer that advertising in the Yellow Pages improves sales?
 c. Would it be advantageous to perform this experiment with independent
samples? Explain why or why not?

14. Following are the test marks for two beginning statistics class students.
Class 1
81 73 86 90 75 80 75 81 85 87 83
75 70 65 80 76 64 74 86 80 83
67 82 78 76 83 71 90 77 81 82
Class 2
84 77 66 75 78 82 82 71 79 73 91
97 89 92 75 89 75 95 84 75 82
74 77 87 69 96 65
Compute the following descriptive statistics for the above two test marks data
sets: mean, s.d. , variance, first four central moments.
Based on the results of mean and s.d., which class did better?
Test the hypothesis that average performance of class 1 students is better than
class 2 at 1% level of significance.
Data is also stored in a file class.xls .

15. The following data represents pay raises from the previous year for salaried
employees to the inflation rate:

Year 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997
Raise 3.3 4.1 3.6 3.1 2.4 2.5 2.7 2.8 3.4 3.9
Inflation 4.4 4.6 6.1 3.1 2.9 2.7 2.7 2.5 3.3 1.7