. Question 2 — 30 marks This question is based on your work on...

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Question 2 — 30 marks This question is based on your work on MU123 up to and including Unit 4. An IT company develops software for the financial services industry. It tests its code using an industry standard software package. Aiming to expand its business and be more competitive in the sector, the company has decided to pilot an in—house software package to test its code. A company researcher wishes to compare the times taken for each package to complete tests. Both software packages were run on 20 occasions testing the same code. The researcher records the times taken on each occasion, and these are shown in Table 1.

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Table 1 Comparison of test times in minutes for the industry standard and tn-house software testing packages Test number Industry standard software package In—house software package 1 457 415 2 437 435 3 444 460 4 432 454 5 476 448 6 468 437 7 444 428 8 448 435 9 656 437 10 462 455 11 460 458 12 454 439 13 467 447 14 491 451 15 466 435 16 476 448 17 436 425 18 449 432 19 492 454 20 486 444

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(a) (1) Which of the three types of investigation discussed on pages 210—214 of Unit 4 is this? Explain your answer briefly. (ii) Are these primary or secondary data, from the researcher's point of View? Explain your answer briefly. (b) Spend a few minutes scanning these datasets by eye. (1) List any three features that you should be looking for when scanning datasets by eye. (ii) Comment on whether or not you think there might be a problem with each of the most extreme values (maximum and minimum) in each column.

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(C) Copy and complete the following table using the datasets given above to work out the missing values. Number of minutes to complete the test Minimum (Min) Lower quartile (Q1) Upper quartile (Q3) Maximum (Max) Mean Standard deviation (SD) Interquartile range (IQR) Range Size of dataset (n) 20 20 (d) (i) Identify the two measures of location from the table in part (c). Use both of these measures to determine which of the two datasets has the higher location. (ii) Identify the three measures of spread from the table in part (c). Which of the two datasets has the wider spread, as measured by each of these three measures?

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(e) (i) The researcher concludes that the in—house software package runs quicker than the industry standard software package. Is this a reasonable conclusion? Explain your answer briefly. (ii) Which stage of the statistical investigation is used in part (e) (i)? Briefly justify your answer. (f) The researcher notices that the industry standard software package entry for the ninth test was a typing error. The correct value should have been 456. The revised mean and median for the industry standard software package data with the correct value for the ninth test are given in the following table. Industry standard software package With typing error With correct value What is the effect on the mean and on the median of including the typing error instead of the correct value? Explain why this happens. (g) Would having the correct value affect the researcher's conclusion in part (e) (i)? Explain your answer briefly.

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