Forbes Magazine lists the richest people in the world each year. The following data represents the ages of 40 of these individuals. All of these individuals have a net worth of at least $5 billion.

17        24        31        32        32        43        43        43

46        50        51        51        54        55        55        59

59        60        62        62        62        62        63        64

69        71        71        73        73        74        75        75

76        77        79        81        82        82        84        84

Use this sample of 40 billionaires to construct a 95% confidence interval for the mean age of all billionaires.

A food magazine called Consumer Reports, carried out a survey of the calorie and sodium content of a number of different brands of hotdog. Two types of hotdog were considered; beef and poultry. The results below show the calorie content of the different brands of beef and poultry hotdogs.

Beef (A): 186, 181, 176, 149, 184, 190, 158, 139, 175, 148, 152, 111, 141, 153, 190, 157, 131, 149,135, 132

Poultry (B): 129, 132, 102, 106, 94, 102, 87, 99, 170, 113, 135, 142, 86, 143, 152, 146, 144

A previous F-test made on this data gave an insignificant result and histograms of the two samples showed that they both looked reasonably normally distributed. test at the 5% significance if there is a difference in calorific content between the two types of hotdogs.

1- Calculate the test statistic, taking note of the order of calculation as indicated in the question (state accurate to 2dp)

2- State the Degrees of Freedom,  df =

3- Look up the upper tail critical value from tables (state to 3dp as given in tables)
t_c =

4- What is your decision regarding H₀ ?

A food magazine called Consumer Reports, carried out a survey of the calorie and sodium content of a number of different brands of hotdog. Two types of hotdog were considered; beef and poultry. The results below show the calorie content of the different brands of beef and poultry hotdogs.

A previous F-test made on this data gave an insignificant result and histograms of the two samples showed that they both looked reasonably normally distributed. test at the 5% significance if there is a difference in calorific content between the two types of hotdogs.

The following offers a timeline of events and observations extracted from trade magazine articles related to Apple’s iCar. This is an issue of product diversification. Answer the questions at the end of this compilation.

TopSpeed, Sept. 2016

2010: Steve Jobs met with upstart V-Vehicles head to talk about their low cost prototype and materials and design.

2012: From the Apple v. Samsung trial: Apple considered “making a camera, making a car, crazy stuff.”

2013: NY Times: Apple’s founder Steve Jobs would have liked to take on Detroit with the Apple Car.

2015: Dodge Caravans carrying LiDar sensor technology, vehicles which were leased by Apple, were spotted driving in Bay Area. Apple says that the cars are to explore mapping technology, not to develop driverless technology.

2015: Business Insider: Apple is already designing a car that would give Tesla “a run for its money”

2015: Wall Street Journal: Apple is secretly building an electric car with several hundred employees. Called Project Titan, the completion date is set for 2019.

2016: Reports surface that Apple is building a team poached from potential rivals. The experts hail from the automotive design, battery technology, autonomous vehicles, and robotics fields. A short list includes former employees from Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, and Ford, as well as Google, Autoliv, Concept Systems, MIT Motorsports, and others.

2016: On the autonomous side of things, Apple has invested heavily in Didi Chuxing, a Chinese ride hailing service similar to Uber. It’s believed the investment could provide Apple with copious driving data – the sort needed for autonomous car development.

2016: Top speed: On the interior of Apple car: That means passengers get stuff like augmented reality features for entertainment, sightseeing, and general information (nearby restaurants, charging station locations, etc.). There should also be exceptionally deep smartphone integration, with the Apple iCar’s onboard systems picking up preferences in music, lighting, and climate control settings. Think of the Apple iCar as a direct extension of the iPhone, plus all the benefits of a fully assimilated living space. Everything will be customizable, and the user interface will be 100 percent automated (after the initial set-up process, of course). Interior cameras will allow you to conduct conference calls while on the move. A standard Wi-Fi hotspot is a given.

TopGear, July 2015

Apple’s products are traditionally beautifully built and designed, satisfying, and easy to use. And cars are increasingly complex and user-hostile:

-Touch screens are unresponsive

-Graphics are hideous

-Connections to phone randomly fail

-Voice activation is ineffective

-Menus are counterintuitive

Moreover, competitors seem to solve one problem but then more their ambitious apps fail. Apple also has a cash pile ($90B) which makes the potential foray affordable as they could get the car and a factory for $12B.

For most electronic stuff except big computers, manufacturing is already subcontracted to locally owned and run plants in China. They have talked to Magna Steyr Austria who manufactured BMW’s first gen X3 and current Countryman, Chrysler’s Voyager, and Mercedes’ G class. Off-the shelf suppliers also exist for powertrains, suspensions, driver-assist systems

However, Apple is not an evangelist like Tesla which strives to end the grip of petroleum, Google, which claims that self-driving cars will reduce traffic accidents, or BMW, which claims that the new mobility is only way to survive. Also, profit margins are small in the industry and the business model may require extra effort. For example, the Tesla and BMW business models stretch into consumers’ lives.

CNBC Oct. 2016

Apple is rumored to be in talks with McLaren. LeEco, a Chinese tech giant in smartphones, cloud, streaming, and virtual reality is in a partnership with Aston Martin.

“Someday cars will just be one more device, not a big thing like owning a house like it was 30 or 40 years ago."

Self-driving vehicles will depend heavily on training data for algorithms. Apple has the sophisticated location technology, developed thru smartphones, which already supports Lyft and Uber. Google, Uber, and Tesla are the most well-known competitors here.

Most popular sensors are getting much cheaper – the technology is getting closer - and large ecosystem investments in energy storage also bring the e-car closer. Apple has battery technologies which are different from Tesla’s (prismatic vs. cylindrical) but are suited to autos developed in parallel with cell phones.

Cybersecurity is also more important in an auto when there is more software in it. Microsoft’s automobile software may monitor the car from anywhere, allow autopayment of tolls, and get automatic software updates. Both Apple and Microsoft have taken a strong stance on data encryption. Facial recognition to identify drivers is also a technology that is emerging. Apple also has CarPlay: a 2nd entertainment screen in car

NYTimes, The Street Aug. 2017

Apple Inc. may have gotten a bit too ambitious in its haste to not miss out on the self-driving car race, and now the tech giant has scaled back its efforts to break into the market. The company had first hoped to build an Apple-branded autonomous vehicle on its own, but due to a series of disagreements between executives and confusion about the project's goals, Apple ultimately decided it would focus on the underlying technology used to power self-driving cars, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, Aug. 22, citing sources close to the situation. Apple plans to test the autonomous vehicle technology in a self-driving shuttle service that will ferry employees around the company's Palo Alto, Calif., campus -- an effort called PAIL, for Palo Alto Infinite Loop, according to the Times.

The moves echo comments made by Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this month and in June, when he said the company was working on a "large project" focused around autonomous systems. Cook has called autonomous vehicles the "mother of all" artificial intelligence projects, which suggested Apple might be building its own car, but on the company's latest earnings call, he made it seem like Apple is reconsidering that idea.

Autonomous systems can be used in a variety of ways, and a vehicle is only one," Cook said on the call with investors. "There are many different areas of it, and I don't want to go any further with that."

Apple is joining an already crowded market populated by rivals including Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo, Tesla Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. Waymo is widely considered to be the front-runner among companies developing autonomous technology. Apple's technology is said to be at the stage where Google's self-driving car efforts were three years ago, Business Insider reported, citing sources familiar with the situation. The tech giant plans to target the ride-hailing industry with its autonomous systems but isn't trying to overtake Uber, Business Insider noted.

Project Titan, the internal code name given to Apple's car project, has been in the works since 2014. Apple staffed up the project heavily, primarily with veteran engineers who had expertise in constructing cars, the Times noted. The team hoped to disrupt the traditional automobile experience, not just with autonomous technology but by introducing things such as motorized doors that open and close silently and the possibility of building spherical, globelike steering wheels. Engineers also thought about ways to redesign Lidar sensors, the core technology that basically acts as the eyes for a self-driving car, by using lasers that scan and analyze the car's surroundings. Apple reportedly wanted to redesign the Lidar sensors, which typically protrude in a cone shape from the top of a car. Other ideas involved adding augmented reality features to a car's dashboard.

A few years into the project, however, it began to hit some speed bumps. Steve Zadesky, a 16-year Apple veteran who oversaw Project Titan, quit the project in January 2016, after a series of disagreements with Apple design cheif Jony Ive. Zadesky wanted to focus on a semi-autonomous car that would have self-driving capabilities but would allow the driver to resume control of the car, while Apple design chief Jony Ive pushed for a fully autonomous car that would let Apple control the entire end-to-end experience. The project is now overseen by longtime Apple executive Bob Mansfield and has reshifted its focus toward building autonomous technology. Apple has been spotted testing its self-driving technology on a fleet of Lexus RX450h SUVs in California, not long after it was granted a test permit by the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

Analysts and experts have said it would make more sense for Apple to scale back its ambitions, lest it risk tapping into the self-driving car race too late. Building an entire car comes with its own challenges, not limited to forming relationships with dealerships, which can be complicated, said Bob O'Donnell, chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research LLC.

"All of those kinds of things are what they probably started to realize would be more challenging," O'Donnell said. "Whereas actual software and tech they were probably making good progress on and said, 'Look, we've got all this work and how should we leverage it?' It's not at all hard to draw the story where that's the case.

MacWorld Oct. 2017:

The most logical outcome? Project Titan "is likely to be a transportation platform - not a car, but the entire experience" Milunovich remarked. It's an interesting idea; if cars in the future can drive themselves, what will the occupants be doing? It's likely that passengers will require some form of entertainment, communications and apps to keep them occupied - something Apple provides with its other devices. With all that on offer, the car will also require Wi-Fi, broadband connectivity, navigation information and its own operating system - all of which the company offers. Combine that with rumors of an upcoming Siri-enabled smart speaker to rival Amazon's hugely popular Alexa-powered Echo. It's not hard to imagine a future where Siri controls and operates your car, providing you with an iOS-like user interface to interact with.

Seeking Alpha, Apr. 2017

Apple lacks growth and innovation while Tesla lacks financial stability. Apple’s growth opportunities are in automotive, virtual reality, and mixed virtual reality. It is currently using its cash to buy back stock at all-time high prices. Shareholders may like this but are there better uses of cash? Tesla is overpriced but an acquisition by Apple merely trades one overvalued stock for another.

Sept. 6, 2016: Samsung Note’s problems: bursting into flames. Apple’s stock price rises from 105 to 145 in a period of a year. But it sustains only 3% growth over the period. Smartphones could be obsolete in 12-15 years due to wearables.

Apple, Inc.

Product Net sales, $million

2017 2016 2015

iPhone 141,319 136,700 155,041

iPad 19,222 20,628 23,227

Mac 25,850 22,831 25,471

Services 29,980 24,348 19,909

Other products 12,863 11,132 10,067

Total 229,234 215,639 233,715

Source: Nov. 2017 10-K report

QUESTIONS: (Why do firms engage in product diversification strategies?)

Q1. Outline Apple’s strengths and weaknesses

Q2. Outline Apple’s opportunities and threats

Q3. What is the justification for an “iCar-related” product diversification strategy at Apple? (You should find a justification in each of the SWOT elements – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.)

Q4. Would you consider Apple’s diversification strategy be related or unrelated diversification?

Read the July 9, 2006 the Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine uploaded in the docs and stuff section of this site. The authors examine a simple supply-and-demand gap with tragic implications: the shortage of human organs for transplantation. In the space of just a few decades, transplant surgery has become remarkably safe and reliable. But this success has bred huge demand: as more patients get new organs, more patients want them. So, while the number of kidney transplants has risen by 45% in the past 10 years, the number of people on a kidney waiting list has risen by 119%. Consequently, some 3,500 people die each year while waiting for a kidney transplant. A big problem is that would-be suppliers of kidneys, whether living or dead, are not given very strong incentives to step forward.

1. Summarize the main arguments about providing incentives for the supply side of this volunteer market.

2. Evaluate the argument carefully. What do you think? Why?

July 9, 2006
Freakonomics
Flesh Trade
By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT
Weighing the Repugnance Factor

How's this for a repugnant situation? Take someone you love, perhaps your spouse or your sibling, and find a stranger who will accept a really big bet that your loved one will die prematurely — and if indeed that happens, you pocket a few million dollars.

This, of course, is how life insurance works. And most Americans don't find this idea repugnant at all. They used to, however. Until the mid-19th century, life insurance was considered "a profanation," as the sociologist Viviana Zelizer has written, "which transformed the sacred event of death into a vulgar commodity."

Alvin Roth, a Harvard economist who studies the design of markets, has done a lot of thinking about repugnance. On some issues, he notes, repugnance will recede, as with life insurance — or, even more momentously, the practice of charging interest on loans. In other cases, the reverse happens: a once-accepted behavior like slaveholding comes to be seen as repugnant.

One case of repugnance is far from settled: the dispute over how human organs for transplantation should be allocated — and, perhaps, even sold. If you happen to have a failing heart or liver or kidneys, you will almost certainly die without a transplant, but if you aren't lucky enough to get an organ through an official registry, you can't legally purchase one at any price. So instead of a free market in organs, we have a volunteer market. Some people agree to give up their usable organs once they die. In the case of a living donor, someone sacrifices a kidney or a portion of a liver to a recipient, most likely a family member.
In the space of just a few decades, transplant surgery has become safe and reliable (to say nothing of miraculous). But success breeds demand: as more patients get new organs, more patients want them. In 2005, more than 16,000 kidney transplants were performed in the U.S., an increase of 45 percent over 10 years. But during that time, the number of people on a kidney waiting list rose by 119 percent. More than 3,500 people now die each year waiting for a kidney transplant.

To an economist, this is a basic supply-and-demand gap with tragic consequences. So what can be done to increase the supply of organs?

A big problem is that would-be suppliers are not given very strong incentives to step forward. In much of Europe, the choice is made for them: instead of "opting in" to donate, the default assumption is that your usable organs will be harvested upon your death unless your family "opts out." But Europe, too, still has a sizable organ shortage, in part because traffic fatalities — which tend to produce desirable organs for harvest — are on a downward trend in Western countries.
If it's hard to get people to give up their organs upon death, consider how much harder it is to persuade a living person to donate a kidney. (From a medical perspective, a kidney from a living donor is far more valuable than a cadaver kidney.) Even though most people can live safely on one kidney, there is still a price to be paid in discomfort, risk, fear and lost wages. But the United States, like pretty much every other country in the world, forbids a donor to collect on that price, or any other.

It is hard to find an economist who agrees with this policy. Gary Becker and Julio Jorge Elias argued in a recent paper that "monetary incentives would increase the supply of organs for transplant sufficiently to eliminate the very large queues in organ markets, and the suffering and deaths of many of those waiting, without increasing the total cost of transplant surgery by more than 12 percent."

Some noneconomists may well find this reasoning repugnant. There are many reasons, after all, for banning the sale of organs. Some people consider it immoral to commodify body parts (although it is now commonplace to not only sell sperm and eggs but also to rent a womb). Others fear that most organ sellers would be poor while most buyers would be rich; or that someone might be pressured into selling a kidney without fully understanding the risks.

But why, Becker and Elias ask, should poor people "be deprived of revenue that could be highly useful to them"? Even more compelling is the fact that a poor person is just as likely as a wealthy person (if not more so) to need a new kidney — and, with no legal market for organs, is just as likely to die while waiting on a list.

Alvin Roth, even though he is an economist, is smart enough to realize that repugnance will keep Americans from embracing a true market for organs anytime soon. So, along with several other scholars and medical personnel, he has helped design a clever alternative, the New England Program for Kidney Exchange. Imagine that you have a wife who is dying of renal failure, and that you would give her one of your kidneys, but you are not a biological match. Now imagine that another couple is in the same bind. The kidney exchange locates and matches the couples: you donate your kidney to the stranger's wife, while the stranger gives his kidney to your wife; the operations are performed simultaneously to make sure no one backs out. Although this system has yielded only a couple dozen transplants so far, it illustrates an economist's understanding of incentives: if you can't get someone to give an organ out of altruism, and you can't pay him either, what do you do? Find two parties who are desperate to align their incentives.

Otherwise, who in his right mind would step forward to donate a kidney to a stranger? In fact, we recently spoke to one such potential donor who asked to remain anonymous. Donor is married, with four children and a precarious financial situation. Because Donor had a sibling who nearly needed an organ transplant, the idea got into Donor's head to perhaps sell a kidney to a stranger. Through a donor Web site, Donor met a potential recipient, whom we'll call Recipient. It wasn't until the process was well under way that Donor learned it was illegal to be paid. In the end, however, Donor's moral mission overrode the financial need, and Donor decided to go ahead with the transplant.
Donor has undergone extensive testing at the hospital where Recipient will have the transplant. Both Donor and Recipient have had to lie repeatedly to the doctors, pretending they are old friends. "If they find out you met on the Internet," Donor explains, "they assume it's for money, and they'll call off the operation."

If all goes well, the transplant may happen soon. Consider the parties who stand to profit from this transaction: Recipient, certainly, as well as the transplant surgeons, the nurses, the hospital, the drug companies. Everyone will be paid in some form — except for Donor, who not only isn't being paid but, in return for carrying out a deeply altruistic act, also has to pay the additional price of lying about it.

Surely there are some people, and not just economists, who would find this situation — well, repugnant.

A magazine provided results from a poll of 1500 adults who were asked to identify their favorite pie. Among the 1500 ​respondents, 14 ​% chose chocolate​ pie, and the margin of error was given as plus or minus 5 percentage points. Describe what is meant by the statement that​ "the margin of error was given as plus or minus 5 percentage​ points." Choose the correct answer below. A. The statement indicates that the study is only 5 ​% confident that the true population percentage of people that prefer chocolate pie is exactly 14 ​%. B. The statement indicates that the interval 14 ​%plus or minus5 ​% is likely to contain the true population percentage of people that prefer chocolate pie. C. The statement indicates that the study is ​100%minus 5​%equals95​% confident that the true population percentage of people that prefer chocolate pie is 14 ​%. D. The statement indicates that the true population percentage of people that prefer chocolate pie is in the interval 14 ​%plus or minus5​%

1. a) Time Magazine states that the drop out rate for high school seniors is ten percent. You conduct a test to see if the drop out rate for high school seniors is actually more than ten percent.  One hundred high school seniors were randomly selected to see if they had dropped out.  The number of these high school seniors who dropped out is 15. Determine the p-value using test statistic, z=1.67.  Draw the graph. (α =0.01)

b) Time Magazine states that the drop out rate for high school seniors is ten percent. You conduct a test to see if the drop out rate for high school seniors is actually more than ten percent.  One hundred high school seniors were randomly selected to see whether they dropped out.  The number of these high school seniors who dropped out is 5.  Use the information and answer from question 1 to make a decision. What is the decision? Explain. (α = .01)   

c) State the proper conclusion for this hypothesis test

2. a) The Maryland Department of Health claims that the proportion of heroin users in Maryland that have been infected by HIV is five percent. Suppose a researcher wants to show that this claim is not true.  The researcher randomly selects 100 Maryland heroin users and finds that 80 have been infected with HIV. Determine the p-value using the test statistic, z= -2.11. Draw the graph.(α = 0.1)

b) The Maryland Department of Health claims that the proportion of heroin in Maryland that have been infected by HIV is four percent. Suppose a researcher wants to show that this claim is not true.  The researcher randomly selects 10000 Maryland heroin users and finds that 80 have been infected with HIV. Use the information and answer from question 2 to make a decision. What is the decision?  Explain. (α = 0.1)

c) State the proper conclusion for this hypothesis test

(a) Select a newspaper/magazine/Internet article published in 2019-2020 that is related to balance of payments and/or foreign exchange markets. Summarize the content of the article. The source of the article should be provided in the reference.

(b) Discuss the article selected in part (a) using relevant economic concepts and theories from A) Balance of Payment/ B)Determinants of Import and Export/ C) Demand and Supply of Foreign Exchange/ D) Equilibrium Exchange Rate.

You can provide additional information beyond the textbook and lecture notes to enrich your discussion. The sources of such additional information, if any, should be provided in the references.

On Monday, Jay See, a vintage car dealer, placed an advertisement in the online motor magazine offering to sell a 1999 Ferrari F355 for $100,000. Jay See left his mobile number for potential buyers to contact him.

On Wednesday, Emil Soh saw the advertisement and immediately called Jay See saying that he would be willing to pay $88,888 cash. Jay See replied that he needed time to consider the price as he received several messages from potential buyers. Jay See further said that he had requested potential buyers to post their cheques to him to show their seriousness in buying the car.

On Thursday, Emil Soh received Jay See’s address and full name through the message. Emil Soh decided to proceed with the purchase based on Jay See’s price of $100,000. He wrote a cheque for $100,000 in Jay See’s full name and posted to Jay See’s address.

Jay See received Emil Soh’s letter with the cheque on Saturday. However, Jay See decided to sell his car to a buyer who offered $120,000. Jay See called Emil Soh and told him that he will be returning his cheque.

Required:

Advise Emil Soh whether there is a legally binding contract with Jay See.

For a new study conducted by a fitness magazine,

240

females were randomly selected. For each, the mean daily calorie consumption was calculated for a September-February period. A second sample of

230

females was chosen independently of the first. For each of them, the mean daily calorie consumption was calculated for a March-August period. During the September-February period, participants consumed a mean of

2385.3

calories daily with a standard deviation of

206

. During the March-August period, participants consumed a mean of

2414.7

calories daily with a standard deviation of

282.5

. The population standard deviations of daily calories consumed for females in the two periods can be estimated using the sample standard deviations, as the samples that were used to compute them were quite large. Construct a

90%

confidence interval for

−μ1μ2

, the difference between the mean daily calorie consumption

μ1

of females in September-February and the mean daily calorie consumption

μ2

of females in March-August. Then complete the table below.

Carry your intermediate computations to at least three decimal places. Round your answers to at least two decimal places. (If necessary, consult a list of formulas.)