Measures of the Spread of the Data · Exercise 29

In a recent issue of the IEEE Spectrum, 84 engineering conferences were announced. Four conferences lasted two days. Thirty-six lasted three days. Eighteen lasted four days. Nineteen lasted five days. Four lasted six days. One lasted seven days. One lasted eight days. One lasted nine days. Let X = the length (in days) of an engineering conference.

(a) Organize the data in a chart.
(b) Find the median, the first quartile, and the third quartile.
(c) Find the 65^th percentile.
(d) Find the 10^th percentile.
(e) Construct a box plot of the data.
(f) The middle 50 percent of the conferences last from ________ days to ________ days.
(g) Calculate the sample mean of days of engineering conferences.
(h) Calculate the sample standard deviation of days of engineering conferences.
(i) Find the mode.
(j) If you were planning an engineering conference, which would you choose as the length of the conference, mean, median, or mode? Explain why you made that choice.
(k) Give two reasons why you think that three to five days seem to be popular lengths of engineering conferences.

Its source prints no answer for this problem, so there's nothing to check against.

OpenStax, Statistics · §2.7 Measures of the Spread of the Data · Exercise 29