Question

Questions 1 to 5 refer to the following dataset for a given year, which is extracted from Fortune magazine. Profits Profit (S millions) rank (S millions) rank Sales Sales Company Industry General Motors 12.95630 161,315 1 Automotive Ford Motor 144,416 2 22,071 2 Automotive Wal-Mart Stores 139.208 3 4.430 14 Retailing Exxon 100,6974 6.370 5 Oil General 100,4695 9.2693 Energy Electric 46 IBM 81.6676 6,328 6 Computers Citigroup 76.4317 5.8078 Banking Philip Morris 57,813 8 5.372 9 Tobacco Boeing 56,154 9 1.120 82 Airplanes 53.588 10 .39 AT&T 6,398 4 Telecommunications

Answer 1

Question 1) The fortune maganize dataset would constitute a sample because it is not feasible to collect data of the whole population due to time and budget constraints. Hence, we collect a sample so that the sample would be a representative of the whole population.

Question 2) The dataset is cross-section data. Cross-sectional data are collected for different entities in a single time period whereas the other three types of data, namely time series, panel and longitudinal data are collected for different time periods. Here, we see that the above data is given for a single year for various industries. Hence the dataset is cross-sectional data.

Question 3) Here, the number of observations are the names of the companies for which the data has been collected. So, the total number of observations in the dataset are 10. Variables are the factors which are likely to vary in terms of value. Here the number of variables is 5 i.e. Sales (millions), Sales rank, Profits (millions), Profits rank, industry.

Question 4) Quantitative variables are numerical variables i.e. variables which are numerical. Qualitative variables, on the other hand, are variables that are not numerical i.e. variables that describes the data. Here, Sales - Quantitative variable, Sales Rank - Qualitative variable, Profits- Quantitative variable, Profit rank- Qualitative variable, Industry- Qualitative variable.