Chapter 2: Data

Extra Practice Problems

Business Statistics: A First Course
BMGT230/BMGT230B
1. A food retailer that specializes in selling organic food has decided to open a new store. To help determine
the best location in the United States for the new store, researchers decide to examine data from existing
stores, including weekly sales ($), town population (thousands), median age of town, median income of
town ($), and whether or not the store sells wine and beer.
a. Who was measured?
b. What was measured?
c. Where was the data collected?
d. When was the data collected?
e. Why was the data collected?
f. Name the variables, specify whether are categorical or quantitative (along with units if quantitative). Be
as specific as possible.
2. A start-up company is building a database of customers and sales information. For each customer, it records
name, ID number, region of the country (1 = East, 2 = South, 3 = Midwest, 4 = West), date of last purchase,
amount of purchase, and item purchased.
a. Who was measured?
b. What was measured?
c. Where was the data collected?
d. When was the data collected?
e. Why was the data collected?
f. Name the variables, specify whether are categorical or quantitative (along with units if quantitative). Be
as specific as possible.
3. As research for an ecology class, students at a college in upstate New York collect data on streams each year
to study the impact of the environment. They record a number of biological, chemical, and physical
variables, including the stream name, the substrate of the stream (limestone, shale, or mixed), the acidity of
the water (pH), the temperature (C), and the BCI (a numerical measure of biological diversity).
a. Who was measured?
b. What was measured?
c. Where was the data collected?
d. When was the data collected?
e. Why was the data collected?
f. Name the variables, specify whether are categorical or quantitative (along with units if quantitative). Be
as specific as possible.
4. L. L. Bean is a large U.S retailer that depends heavily on its catalog sales. It collects data internally and
tracks the number of catalogs mailed out, the number of square inches in each catalog, and the sales
($ thousands) in the 4 weeks following each mailing. The company is interested in learning more about the
relationship (if any) among the timing and space of their catalogs and their sales.
a. Who was measured?
b. What was measured?
c. Where was the data collected?
d. When was the data collected?
e. Why was the data collected?
f. Name the variables, specify whether are categorical or quantitative (along with units if quantitative). Be
as specific as possible.

Chapter 2: Data
Extra Practice Problems
Business Statistics: A First Course
BMGT230/BMGT230B
5. For the following examples, indicate whether the data are time series or cross-sectional data.
a. Number of cars sold by each salesperson in a dealership in September.
b. Number of motorcycles sold by a dealership in each month of 2008.
c. Average diameter of trees brought to a sawmill in each week of a year.
d. Attendance at the third World Series game recording the age of each fan.
e. Daily stock price of Volkswagen from September 2015 to December 2015.
f. Cumulative GPA for all May 2015 graduates from the University of Maryland.
g. Acceptance rates of the top 50 public universities in the United States last year.
h. Weekly total book sales, in dollars, at a bookstore in the year 2013.
i. 4th Quarter earnings of the companies in the Dow in 2015.
j. Average monthly temperature in California in the year 2010.