The following are practice problems are for a statistics course I am
taking. I need some tutoring in the following problems; please answer
them accordingly. All information contained within these problems is
ficticous. They are merely for practice.

Thank you!

1. What is the level of measurement for each of the following variables?
a. Student IQ ratings.
b. Distance students travel to class.
c. Student scores on the first statistics test.
d. A classification of students by state of birth.
e. A ranking of students by freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior.
f. Number of hours students study per week.


Determine the median and (b) the mode for 17 & 18.

17. The following is the percent change in net income from 2000 to
2001 for a sample of
12 construction companies in Denver.
5 	1 	-10	-6 	5 	12	 7 	8 	2	 

5 	-1	 11



18. The following are the ages of the 10 people in the video arcade at
the Southwyck Shopping
Mall at 10 A.M. this morning.
12	 8 	17	 6 	11 	14	 8 	17 	10	 

8

Hi mrynot!
Here are the answers to your questions.

Question 1

The level of measurement of a variable can be either nominal, ordinal,
interval or ratio. You may check the following websites for a very
clear definition of these concepts.

Levels of Measurement
http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/measlevl.htm

http://courses.csusm.edu/soc201kb/levelofmeasurementrefresher.htm

Using the information in these links, we can classify the stated variables as

a. Interval
b. Ratio
c. Ratio
d. Nominal
e. Ordinal
f. Ratio


Question 2

We must first define what median and mode is. The median is the value
that divides an ordered sample into two equal-sized subsamples. The
mode is the most frequent value in a sample.

Statistical mean, median mode and range
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid80_gci1060882,00.html

So first of all we order the sample:

-10 -6 -1 1 2 5 5 5 7 8 11 12

The median is 5, because the two middle numbers (we have an even
number of data points) are 5 and 5.

The mode is also 5, because 5 is the most frequent value (it happened
in 3 companies)


Question 3

The methodology is obviously the same as in question 2. We order the sample:

6 8 8 8 10 11 12 14 17 17

The median here is 10.5 (the middle numbers are 10 and 11, so the
average of these two is 10.5)

The mode is 8, the most frequent value.


Google search terms
"level of measurement"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22level+of+measurement%22
median mode definition
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=median+mode+definition


I hope this helps! If you have any questions regarding my answer,
please don't hesitate to request a clarification. Otherwise I await
your rating and final comments.

Best wishes!
elmarto

elmarto, great job. Thanks!