DS350 - Quantitative Methods

Homework #4 - Textbook Prices

This homework exercise is intended to give you experience with simple data collection procedures and problems, and with studies that compare two populations. It is due at the beginning of class on Wednesday, March 17. Late papers will not be accepted. The assignment is worth 30 points toward your homework/quiz grade.

A standard complaint on this (and any) college campus is that the books in the bookstore are overpriced. In this assignment you are to compare bookstore prices on a sample of books to those of another sales outlet.

The data for this exercise will be the price of your textbooks for this semester, both at the Stetson Bookstore and at an online bookstore (such as Amazon.com). Your sample should include at least ten books. If you don't have that many books for classes this semester (and you probably don't), then randomly select additional books used in other classes.

Using those data as a sample, answer the research question: How much more expensive (or cheaper) is the bookstore, per book, on average, for the population of all textbooks?

Once you have answered that question, use your result to answer two subsidiary questions: (1) how much a typical student pays extra (or saves), for a semester's books, and (2) how much money, campus wide, is overcharged (or saved) by bookstore prices

The report should be typed. This includes any equations and formulas used. This may involve using the "Equation Editor" in your word processor. (They're a bit awkward to use at first, but great gadgets once you get the hang of them.) Submit a list of your data, as part of your writeup.

Remember that, while you may confer with others while working on the homework, your final report must represent essentially your own work. On this assignment, this means that your data set will probably be at least somewhat different than other students taking the course. It also means that your write-up will be your own, in your own words. (If I can tell at a glance whom you worked with, you've gone beyond the bounds of acceptable collaboration.)