Introduction to Internet Exercises

The Internet and the World Wide Web provide a rich source of data and information on a limitless variety of subjects, among them government statistics, data about firms, and data about consumers. Though you probably have experience using the Internet, in this book we will use the Internet as a source of data for statistical analysis. We do this through Internet exercises in many chapters of this book. These exercises will ask you to go to a website, find appropriate data (and perhaps copy it) and then analyze the data.

The BSC: The McGraw-Hill/Irwin Business Statistics Center   The BSC is a collection of Internet-based resources for teaching and learning about business statistics. It includes links to statistical publications, websites, software, and data sources. To go to the BSC, enter the Web address http://www.mhhe.com/business/opsci/bstat/ into your browser. There are also links to the BSC on the CD-ROM included with this text. To see a list of databases accessible through the BSC, click on the Data Bases button on the BSC home screen. Updated links to data and additional Internet exercises can also be found at this text’s website—http://www.mhhe.com/business/opsci/bowerman/.

1.30 Internet Exercise

The website maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau provides a multitude of social, economic, and government data. In particular, this website houses selected data from the most recent Statistical Abstract of the United States (http://www.census.gov/statab/www/). Among these selected features are “Frequently Requested Tables” that can be accessed simply by clicking on the label.

1. Go to the U.S. Census Bureau website and open the “Frequently requested tables” from the Statistical Abstract. Find the table of “Consumer Price Indexes by Major Groups.” (Note that in Chapter 17 we explain how price indexes are constructed.) Construct runs plots of (1) the price index for all items over time (years), (2) the price index for food over time, (3) the price index for fuel oil over time, and (4) the price index for electricity over time. For each runs plot, describe apparent trends in the price index.
2. By opening the “Frequently requested tables” from the Statistical Abstract, find the table of “Crimes and Crime Rates, by Type.” Repeat the analysis of part (a) for each of (1) total violent crime rate (per 100,000 population) over time, (2) murder rate (per 100,000 population) over time, and (3) robbery rate (per 100,000 population) over time.

1.31 Internet Exercise

The website maintained by Fortune magazine (http://www.fortune.com) offers a wide selection of interesting business data. Included is the famous Fortune 500 List as well as many other company lists (America’s Most Admired Companies, The Fortune Global 500, etc.).

1. Go to the Fortune website and find the Fortune 500 list. Consider the first 50 companies (ranked 1 through 50 by revenue) and select a random sample of 10 of the top 50 companies, using either a random number table (Table 1.1(a)) or random numbers obtained using MINITAB or MegaStat. Justify that your sample is a random sample by explaining exactly how the sample was selected.
2. Go to the Fortune website and find the Fortune Global 500 list. Select a systematic sample of 10 companies from this list. Explain exactly how the sample was selected.

Exercises  1.30, 1.31