1. The National Center for Health Statistics maintains a website at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs . Under the section labeled Tabulated State Data, click on Births. Go to that page and locate the table "Live Births by Race and Hispanic Origin of Mother: U.S., Each State, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and Guam."

Suppose you are interested in birth rates for the 50 states. Develop a box plot of the data. Compute the mean, median, standard deviation, and coefficient of skewness. What can you conclude about the shape of the distribution?

2. There are many financial websites that provide information on stocks by industry. For example, go to http://biz.yahoo.com and select Stock Research, under Analyst Research select Sector/Industry. There are many choices available here such as Energy, Financial, and Healthcare.

Select one of these sectors, such as Healthcare. Another list of choices is now available; select one such as Major Drug. A list of companies in that industry will appear. Select one of the variables available, such as the price to earnings ratio, listed as P/E. This variable is the ratio of the selling price of a share of the company's common stock to the earnings per share of common stock.

Download this information into Excel and find the mean, median, and standard deviation. Go back to Sector/Industry and choose another Sector and Industry. You might want to select Energy and then Coal. A list of companies will appear. Select the same variable as before. Download the information to Excel and find the mean, median, and standard deviation for this Industry. Compare the information on the two sectors.

Write a brief report summarizing your findings. Are the means different? Is there more variability in one industry than another?

3. One of the most famous averages, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), is not really an average. The following is a listing of the 30 companies whose stock prices make up the DJIA. Also listed is the selling price on November 8, 2001, the change from the previous day's price, the percent change, and the number of shares sold. Compute the mean selling price of the 30 stocks. At the time of this snapshot the DJIA was reported at 9587.52. Compare that value to the mean of the 30 stocks.

You may read about the history of the DJIA by going to http://www.djindexes.com and clicking on About the Dow. This will explain why it is not really average. There are many sites you can visit to check the current value of the DJIA, http://www.cnnfn.com, http://foxnews.com/news/features/dow, and http://www.usatoday.com are three of the many sources.

To find a list of the actual stocks that make up the average go to http://bloomberg.com . On the toolbar, click on Markets, then down the left side of the screen select Stocks in the Dow. You should now have available a listing of the current selling price of 30 stocks that comprise the DJIA.