Boomtowns. In 2006, Inc. magazine (www.inc.com) listed its choice of "boomtowns" in the United States- larger cities that are growing rapidly. Here is the magazine's top 20, along with their job growth percentages:
a) Make a suitable display of the growth rates.
b) Summarize the typical growth rate among these cities with a median and mean. Why do they differ?
c) Given what you know about the distribution, which of the measures in part b does the better job of summarizing the growth rates? Why?
d) Summarize the spread of the growth rate distribution with a standard deviation and with an IQR.
e) Given what you know about the distribution, which of the measures in part d does the better job of summarizing the growth rates? Why?
f) Suppose we subtract from each of the preceding growth rates the predicted U.S. average growth rate of 1.20%, so that we can look at how much these growth rates exceed the U.S. rate. How would this change the values of the summary statistics you calculated above? (Hint: You need not recompute any of the summary statistics from scratch.)
g) If we were to omit Las Vegas from the data, how would you expect the mean, median, standard deviation, and IQR to change? Explain your expectations for each.
h) Write a brief report about all of these growth rates.