Edexcel S3 2009 June — Question 3

Exam BoardEdexcel
ModuleS3 (Statistics 3)
Year2009
SessionJune
TopicHypothesis test of Spearman’s rank correlation coefficien

3. A doctor is interested in the relationship between a person's Body Mass Index (BMI) and their level of fitness. She believes that a lower BMI leads to a greater level of fitness. She randomly selects 10 female 18 year-olds and calculates each individual's BMI. The females then run a race and the doctor records their finishing positions. The results are shown in the table.
Individual\(A\)\(B\)\(C\)\(D\)\(E\)\(F\)\(G\)\(H\)\(I\)\(J\)
BMI17.421.418.924.419.420.122.618.425.828.1
Finishing position35196410278
  1. Calculate Spearman's rank correlation coefficient for these data.
  2. Stating your hypotheses clearly and using a one tailed test with a \(5 \%\) level of significance, interpret your rank correlation coefficient.
  3. Give a reason to support the use of the rank correlation coefficient rather than the product moment correlation coefficient with these data.