3.7 Drills: computational exercises

(Answers are available in Sect. A.4)

These Drill exercises (repeated practice) give you practice at getting computations correct, and using your calculator. These drill questions are more about practising the underlying mathematics rather than the statistics. If you need help, please ask.

  1. The data in Table 3.2 give the heights of female tennis players at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in metres (Telford and Cunningham 1991).
    1. Using your calculator's Statistics Mode, find the mean and standard deviation of the data.
    2. Without using a calculator, find the median of the data.
    3. Compute the IQR for the data.
TABLE 3.2: The heights (in metres) of females tennis players at the AIS
167.9 177.5 162.5 172.5 166.7 175 157.9
  1. Bamboo is a fast-growing, strong grass useful for green building practices. A small research study explored the properties of bamboo when used as flooring material, including the bending strength (the Modulus of Rupture, or MOR, in MPa).
    Five different bamboo floorboards were provided by Bamboo Flooring Australia Pty Ltd and assessed by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries (Gerber 2004). The five MOR test results (in MPa) are shown in Table 3.3.
    1. Identify the type of RQ being answered: descriptive, relational, cross-sectional or correlational. Justify your answer.
    2. Use your calculator's statistics mode to compute the mean and the standard deviation.
TABLE 3.3: The MOR (in MPa) for five bamboo boards
99.2 111.2 97.6 101.1 104
  1. The data in Table 3.2 give the percentage body fat of females swimmers at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) (Telford and Cunningham 1991).
    1. Using your calculator's Statistics Mode, find the mean and standard deviation of the data.
    2. Without using a calculator, find the median of the data.
    3. Compute the IQR.
TABLE 3.4: The percentage body fat of females swimmers players at the AIS
14.52 11.47 17.71 18.48 11.22 13.61 12.78 11.85 13.35

References

Gerber S. Material properties of bamboo flooring. Indooroopilly, Queensland: Queensland Department of Primary Industries, for Bamboo Flooring Pty Ltd; 2004. Report No.: 2-04.
Telford RD, Cunningham RB. Sex, sport, and body-size dependency of hematology in highly trained athletes. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 1991;23(7):788–94.
Copyright © Peter K. Dunn, 2024