Collection of Problems on Descriptive Statistics, Semester 1

1. A variable x takes only two values x1 and x2 with equal frequencies. Compute Mean
deviation about the arithmetic mean.
2. How is mean deviation about A affected when all the values are increased by a
constant amount a?

xi x

3. Suppose that the variable x takes positive values only and that the deviations
x
are small compared to . Show that in such a case

S2
xG x 1 2
2x

,
2

S
x H x 1 2
x

s2
x 1 2
8x
x

Mean(
)
2
2
x xg s 2

2( x xg )
x
Fi '

4. Let x be a variable assuming the values i=1,2,k, with frequencies f i and let

be the

Fi ''

corresponding cumulative frequency of the greater than type while

are the

cumulative totals of the greater than type of these cumulative frequencies. If n be the
total frequency and
1 k
1 k
T1 Fi ' , T2 Fi ''
n i 1
n i 1

, show that

S 2T2 T1 T
2

2
1

.
5. Let there be k class intervals in a frequency table, each of width c. If f i be the
frequency for the ith class and xi the corresponding class mark, and if
i
i
1
1
Fi f j , Fi ' Fi , S1 Fi , S 2 Fi '
n i
n i
j 1
j 1

x x k c( S1 1), S 2 c 2 ( 2 S 2 S1 S12 )

n being the total frequency, show that,

6. If the mean and variance of one set of values be

x2

S 22

and

x1

S
and

2
1

and those of another set be

respectively and each set has n values, then prove that the variance S 2 of the

combined set of values is given by,

d x1 x 2
4 S 2 2( S12 S 22 ) d 2
, where
.
7. If two variables x and y are related as y=a+bx, then establish a relationship between
the quartile deviation of x and y.
8. Find the mean deviation about mean and standard deviation of the AP a, a+d,a+2d,
a+2nd and prove that the latter is greater than the former.
9. If in a series of observations we obtain m 1 values of magnitude x1, m2 values of
magnitude x2 and so on and if

is the mean value of all the measurements , prove

that the standard deviation is given by,

m (k x )
m
r

x k

, where,
and k is any constant.
10. Show that if a variable takes the values 0,1,..,n with frequencies proportional to the
1, nC1 ,.., nCn

binomial coefficients

respectively then the mean of the distribution is

n/2, the mean square deviation is n(n+1)/4 and the variance is n/4.
11. Show that if
S f k ( f k f k 1 ) ( f k f k 1 f k 2 ) ... ( f k f k 1 ... f 2 )
AM x1

f1 , f 2 ,.., f k
Where

are the class frequencies then

hS
N

point of the first class, h= class interval and N= Total frequency.

, where x1 is the mid-