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65 Gosset\'s data on double stout sales. William Sealy Gosset worked at the Guin

ID: 3040337 • Letter: 6

Question

65 Gosset's data on double stout sales. William Sealy Gosset worked at the Guinness Brewery in Dublin and made substantial contributions to the practice of statistics.3 In his work at the brewery, he collected and analyzed a great deal of data. Archives with Gosset's handwritten tables, graphs, and notes have been preserved at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.4 In one study, Gosset examined the change in the double stout market before and after World War I (1914-1918). For various regions in England and Scotland, he calculated the ratio of sales in 1925, after the war, as a percent of sales in 1913, before the war. Here are the data: STOUT Bristol Cardiff English Agents English O English P English R 94 Glasgow 112 Liverpool 78 London 68 Manchester 46 Newcastle-on-Tyne 118 111 Scottish 140 428 190 24 (a) Compute the mean for these data. (b) Compute the median for these data. (c) Which measure do you prefer for describing the center of this distribution? Explain your answer. (You may include a graphical summary as part of your explanation.)

Explanation / Answer

(a) Mean of the data = 122.9167

(b) Median of the data = 102.5

(c) The median is a central value of the data. It is that value for which one expects half of the (possible or observed) values being smaller and the other half being larger. In general, the median is more robust with respect to outliers.

Therefore, we should use the median to describe the center of the data