"On July 10, 2004 Andre Tolme Became the First Person to Golf Across Mongolia" is the headline of the www.golfmongolia.com website. A New York Times article by James Brooke described the feat: "Andre Tolme sized up the day's golfing terrain, thousands of yards of treeless steppe rolling toward a distant horizon. Without a golfer to be seen for 100 miles around, he loosened up at his own pace, taking practice swings with a 3-iron. Then, with a powerful clockwise whirl and a satisfying swak! he sent the little white ball soaring far into the clear blue Mongolian sky. ‘I feel good about that shot,' Mr. Tolme said, intently tracking the ball until it disappeared from view. ‘You could just hit the ball forever here.' In a sense, he is. This summer, Mr. Tolme, a civil engineer from New Hampshire, is golfing across Mongolia. Treating this enormous Central Asian nation as his private course, he has divided Mongolia into 18 holes. The total fairway distance is 2,322,000 yards. Par is 11,880 strokes. ‘You hit the ball,' he said, explaining his technique in a land without fences, a nation that is twice the size of Texas. ‘Then you go and find it. Then you hit it again. And again. And again.'" Tolme's website includes data on the 18 holes that stretch across Mongolia.
a. Use software to produce a scatterplot and regression of par on miles. The relationship is positive because longer stretches should require more shots. Is it weak, moderate, or strong?
b. If regression is used to predict the par for a hole, based on how many miles it covers, what is the approximate size of the prediction error for those 18 holes?
c. Use software to produce a scatterplot and regression of actual shots on miles. The relationship is positive, because longer stretches really did require more shots. Is it weak, moderate, or strong?
d. If regression is used to predict the number of shots Tolme needed for a hole, based on how many miles it covers, what is the approximate size of the prediction error for those 18 holes?
e. Which relationship is stronger: the one between par and miles, or the one between shots and miles? f. Which prediction error is smaller, and by how much: the one for predicting par from miles, or the one for predicting shots from miles?
g. Produce a scatterplot of balls lost versus hole, and pick one of the following to summarize the situation:
1. There was no apparent relationship between number of balls lost and which hole was played.
2. There was a weak positive relationship between number of balls lost and which hole was played, suggesting that Tolme may have become somewhat less careful as he advanced across the country.
3. There was a weak negative relationship between number of balls lost and which hole was played, suggesting that Tolme may have become somewhat better at keeping track of balls as he advanced across the country
h. Which of the following best summarizes the amount of scatter for balls lost on holes 1 through 18?
1. The scatter was fairly uniform throughout, from beginning to end.
2. The number of balls lost varied more for the first nine holes and less for the last nine.
3. The number of balls lost varied less for the first nine holes and more for the last nine
i. Produce a scatterplot of balls lost versus miles, and pick one of the following to summarize the situation:
1. There was no apparent relationship between number of balls lost and how many miles long a hole was.
2. There was a weak positive relationship between number of balls lost and how many miles long a hole was, suggesting that it was somewhat more likely to lose balls on the longer stretches.
3. There was a weak negative relationship between number of balls lost and how many miles long a hole was, suggesting that the shorter stretches may have had more obstructions where a ball could be hidden from view.
j. Which of the following best summarizes the amount of scatter for balls lost on holes of various lengths?
1. The scatter was fairly uniform throughout, from beginning to end.
2. The number of balls lost varied more for shorter holes and less for longer ones.
3. The number of balls lost varied less for shorter holes and more for longer ones.
k. On average, how many shots did Tolme use per ball before losing it?
l. On average, how many yards did Tolme hit each shot?