Communicating Quantitative Information Final Guide



1 Communicating Quantitative Information Final Guide

The Final is cumulative: review the midterm guide and the midterm, especially anything you missed.

1. What is the equivalent as a fraction of the following percentages: 50%, 100%, 200%, 25%, 33.33333%, 75%. For example, the answer for 50% is ½.

2. What is the equivalent as a percentage of the following numbers: ½, 1/3, ¼, ¾, 8/10, 1, 5, 10. For example, the answer for ½ is 50%. The answer for 5 is 500%.

3. A store has an inventory of 600 bottles of water, 300 bottles of juice, and 100 bottles of expresso drink. What is the total number of bottles in the store? Say the store sells 50% of the water bottles, 50% of the juice and all of the expresso. How many bottles has it sold? What remains in inventory? Did the store sell more water or more expresso?

4. Describe how in Excel you can quickly create a row of labels holding Year 1, Year 2, etc.

5. Describe how in Excel you can enter the data and formulas to calculate frequencies of numbers in ranges of data.

6. Describe how in Excel you give a name to a cell or a range of cells. Describe the advantages of doing this.

7. Describe the Excel function frequency, including describing the parameters.

8. Describe the Excel function vlookup, including describing the parameters.

9. Describe and contrast scatter plot and bubble graph. What are uses of each?

10. Compare and contrast the following spreadsheet functions: average, frequency, vlookup.

11. The if function was used in the diet and exercise example. Describe how it worked.

12. What did Dr. Meyer mean when she said that the midterm (or final) test results could be bimodal if there was one group of students who studied using the guide and one group that did not. What were the midterm test results in comparison with other years?

13. We compared the midterm results of for this year and two previous years. How did we do it (what functions were used)? How do the three compare?

14. What is meant by the time-value of money? What is the formula for compound growth? How would a $100,000 investment grow assuming annual compounding, given 10 years, interest rate of 5%

15. Describe by showing the calculations what you would owe on a credit card that charges 18% annual interest if you had a balance (owed) $300, charged an additional $120, and paid $50 for a given month? Continue the calculation for the second month putting in new purchases and paying some specific amount. Note: you can assume the charges are compounded only monthly, not daily. Indicate what would be the daily rate if they were compounded daily.

16. Describe what is meant by compounding? Describe what is meant by 'interest on the interest'. Describe how this is a good thing for saving and a bad thing for debt.

17. Describe different types of investments (stocks, mutual funds, government (including municipal bonds), corporate bonds) and relative risks. What are the risks of keeping money under your bed?

18. Describe futures investments. Describe a specific example, say Tom buys a future contract to buy shares of company XYZ on a certain day. Describe why he might do this and when it works out well for him and when it works out badly. Describe a similar example for selling.

19. Describe the current Social Security system. Be sure to include the rate, how it is matched, the source of money for current benefits, what is meant by its being a transfer plan, what is meant by entitlement.

20. Describe the financial crisis that started in 2008, and its causes arising from mortgages. Define subprime loan, securitized mortgages. Describe the problems.

21. What did you investigate for the personal finance assignment given for over the Thanksgiving break? What did Dr. Meyer ask for specifically and what did she say not to include. Respond to the assignment here. I will not expect the addresses of websites to be accurate.

22. An alternative assignment to personal finance was to use a model supplied by the State of Alaska to formulate an answer to Alaska's financial problems. Describe what you did.

23. What is meant by ‘defined contribution plan’ and ‘defined benefit plan’ in terms of retirement programs?

24. Describe how a mortgage works. What is meant by "being underwater" on a mortgage?

25. Describe the equity of an owner in the following situation: original price of house $300,000. Down payment 20%. After a time period, owner has paid off $2000 of the loan. Current value of house $400,000. What is the equity? Show work.

26. Describe the uses and the results of the Excel functions pmt and ppmt.

27. Describe the uses and the results of the Excel functions pv and fv. Write expressions showing uses for both pv and fv.

28. Describe the double-blind testing to establish the benefits of the Salk vaccine. Include description of Dr. Meyer's very small role. Use terms: control group, condition group, placebo.

29. Given a test with a sensitivity (accuracy at indicating who has the condition) of 95% and a specificity (accuracy at indicating who does NOT have the condition) of 92%, how many false positives and false negatives would occur in screening a population of 100,000, in which 5% actually have the condition.

30. Describe what is meant by catastrophic health insurance. Give examples with actual numbers.

31. Describe the Colbert Bump and the technique used by a researcher to test the claim.

32. Discuss voter turnout, including youth voter turnout, at presidential and midterm elections. How could voter participation be improved?

33. Describe how polling is done, using the terms confidence and margin of error.

34. Describe why polling is becoming more difficult.

35. What is the Greenland problem for map makers?

36. Describe the problem of making maps (be sure to use the term projection). What are factors to preserve? Describe the Fuller dymaxion, Robinson, and Peters projections.

37. Why is the common map found in schools sometimes described as taking a political position? Describe alternatives.

38. Describe and defend a grading allocation for a college writing course. Describe and defend a grading allocation for a course of your choosing, including CQI.

39. Who are the 99% and who are the 1% ? What is a (rough) estimate of the income of each? Give arguments (take both sides) for how this is to be expected or something to change.

40. Make up a distribution of income for 100 people (you can have several groups) and calculate the mean, mode and median.

41. Describe (roughly) how income tax is computed. What is meant by marginal rate? What is the role of deductions?

42. What is meant by a tax system being progressive? Describe which taxes are progressive and which are not.

43. Describe (include a sketch) of a visualization presented in class (for example, the video clip of 200 countries, 200 years; the blocks depiction of the federal budget; one of the artist works presented by the guest speaker). If the visualization has a dynamic (interactive) component, be sure and describe.

44. Describe an article that was the subject of a posting (yours or someone else's). Describe and assess the description of the quantitative information.

45. Describe the 538 tool for predicting the 2016 presidential election based on the 5 demographic groups (list the groups). Describe your own experiment.

46. Summarize one of the 3 articles referenced in class for the final. Assess the article in terms of communicating quantitative information.

47. Summarize one presentation other than your own. Focus on quantitative information.

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