Edexcel S3 2018 June — Question 1

Exam BoardEdexcel
ModuleS3 (Statistics 3)
Year2018
SessionJune
TopicHypothesis test of Spearman’s rank correlation coefficien

  1. A random sample of 9 footballers is chosen to participate in an obstacle course. The time taken, \(y\) seconds, for each footballer to complete the obstacle course is recorded, together with the footballer's Body Mass Index, \(x\). The results are shown in the table below.
FootballerBody Mass Index, \(\boldsymbol { x }\)Time taken to complete the obstacle course, \(y\) seconds
A18.7690
B19.5801
C20.2723
D20.4633
E20.8660
F21.9655
G23.2711
H24.3642
I24.8607
Russell claims, that for footballers, as Body Mass Index increases the time taken to complete the obstacle course tends to decrease.
  1. Find, to 3 decimal places, Spearman's rank correlation coefficient between \(x\) and \(y\).
  2. Use your value of Spearman's rank correlation coefficient to test Russell's claim. Use a 5\% significance level and state your hypotheses clearly. The product moment correlation coefficient for these data is - 0.5594
  3. Use the value of the product moment correlation coefficient to test for evidence of a negative correlation between Body Mass Index and the time taken to complete the obstacle course. Use a 5\% significance level.
  4. Using your conclusions to part (b) and part (c), describe the relationship between Body Mass Index and the time taken to complete the obstacle course.