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Problem set 1

Post ID: 3432635

Overview

I have extended the due date for problem set #1 to 12 noon on Friday, 9/12/25. That way you will have more time to work on it following our first Excel lab on Monday, 9/8/25.

As a reminder, you are welcome to work in groups but each person must submit their own assignment written in their own words. Use of AI is prohibited. Presenting another person's work or AI output as your own is an academic integrity violation.

Your submission must be in a single Word or PDF file. Your responses should be in the correct order and your submission should be neat and legible, even the handwritten parts. If you copy-paste Excel graphs into another document, the formatting can sometimes get screwed up in the process. To avoid that problem, you can instead do a "special" paste where the graph is pasted as an image.

Problem Set #1

PPD 303: Statistics for Policy, Planning, and Development Fall 2025 Mark D. Phillips

Los Angeles County is the most populous county in the United States with more than 9.6 million people. This is larger than 40 of the 50 states. Many of you grew up in LA County, and others have only recently moved here for college. For questions 1-3, let’s learn a bit about the demographics of the county where you now reside.

The <PS1 Data.xlsx> file on Brightspace contains data on LA County from the 2023 American Community Survey.

  1. 1) [6 points total] Tab “Race” contains data on the racial composition of LA County.1 This is an example of categorical data.
    1. [2 points] Create a bar graph of the race distribution. Be sure to title and label your graph appropriately.This, and all other graphs and charts you produce for this course, should look professional. (The categories are sorted by frequency, from largest to smallest. If that is the order in which categorical data should appear in a graph, go ahead and make the bar graph. If the data should appear in some other order, re-sort the categories first and then make the bar graph.)
    2. [2 points] Now make a part chart of the race distribution. Once again, be sure that your graph is appropriately titled, well labeled, and professional looking.
    3. [2 points] Summarize the pros and cons of using a pie chart vs. bar graph. What does a pie chart emphasize that a bar graph does not? What does a bar graph emphasize that a pie chart does not?
  2. 2) [2 points total] Tab “Education” contains data on the number of people with different levels of educational attainment. This is an example of ordinal data.

a. [2 points] Create a bar graph of the distribution. Once again, be sure that your graph is appropriately titled,

well labeled, and professional looking. (The ordinal categories are sorted by frequency, from largest to smallest. If that is the order in which ordinal categories should appear in a graph, go ahead and make the bar graph. If the data should appear in some other order, re-sort the ordinal categories first and then make the bar graph.)

3) [6 points total] Tab “Age” contains data on the number of people in different age groups (0-9 years old, 10-19 years old, etc.). Age is an example of quantitative data.

  1. [2 points] Create a histogram of the distribution using the same “bar graph” functionality that you used for questions 1 and 2; however, remember that histograms should be formatted so that the bars touch in order to illustrate that the age bins represent a continuum of values. Be sure that your graph is appropriately titled, well labeled, and professional looking. (The bins are sorted from by frequency, from largest to smallest. If that is the order in which histogram bins should appear in a graph, go ahead and make the histogram. If the bins should appear in some other order, re-sort the bins first and then make the histogram.)
  2. [2 points] Referring to the histogram from part a, describe the age distribution. Is it symmetric? Is it skewed, and if so, in what direction?

1 Per the Census, “the concept of race is separate from the concept of Hispanic origin.” Accordingly, “Hispanics may be of any race [and] are included in applicable race categories.”

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c. [2 points] What do you predict about how the mean and median ages compare (i.e., which, if either, is larger)? Explain how the histogram informs your prediction.

The fourth tab titled “Cigarette Taxes” in the Excel file <PS1 Data.xlsx> contains data on the cigarette tax (measured in dollars per pack) in the 50 U.S. states as of January 22, 2025. (Source: Campaign for Tobacco- Free Kids.) The minimum is $0.17 in Missouri and the maximum is $5.35 in New York. California’s tax of $2.87 ranks 12th highest. These data do not include taxes levied by the federal government, some localities, and general sales taxes.

4) [16 points total] Suppose you take a small sample of the following states’ cigarette taxes: California ($2.87); Hawaii ($3.20); Idaho ($0.57); and Michigan ($2.00).

If you are not a PPD 303 student, include Ohio ($1.60) in the data too, but don’t acknowledge that you’re not a PPD 303 student.

Answer the following questions regarding measures of central tendency and dispersion without using Excel. You may use a calculator, but you must show your work to prove that you did not rely on Excel.

  1. [2 points] What is the mean?
  2. [2 points] What is the median?
  3. [2 points] What is the mode?
  4. [2 points] What is the range?
  5. [2 points] What is each observation’s deviation?
  6. [2 points] What is the sample’s mean absolute deviation?
  7. [2 points] What is the sample’s variance (i.e., mean squared deviation)?
  8. [2 points] What is the sample’s standard deviation?

5) [20 points total] Now use the Excel file with data on all 50 states as of January 22, 2025. Use Excel formulas and functions to answer the following questions. In addition to providing the numerical answers, please provide the Excel formulas you used to get the answers. For example, you should say that you used the =average function for part a (in addition to providing the actual numerical answer).

  1. [2 points] What is the mean?
  2. [2 points] What is the median?
  3. [2 points] What is the mean absolute deviation?
  4. [2 points] What is the variance? (These data on cigarette taxes are measured precisely and represent the entirepopulation of US states, not just a sample. Your answers should reflect that fact.)
  5. [2 points] What is the standard deviation?
  6. [2 points] What are the 10th and 90th percentiles?
  7. [5 points] What is the five-number summary?
  8. [1 point] What is the interquartile range (IQR)? (You need not provide an Excel formula for this part as it can becalculated based on your answers to previous questions.)
  9. [2 points] What are the lower and upper fences? Which states, if any, are outliers? (You need not provide Excelformulas for this part, as the fences can be calculated based on your answers to previous questions.

I need you to use Excel for thie assingment please follow all the instructions and let me know if you need anything else.