A recently hired investment analyst has been assigned to analyze the companies that make up the Fortune 800, a collection of the largest U.S. companies. He codes each company by the type of industry to which they belong. Here is a table showing some of the industry types and the corresponding codes he uses:
|
Industry
|
Industry Code
|
|
Financial Services
|
1
|
|
Food/ drink/ tobacco
|
2
|
|
Health
|
3
|
|
Insurance
|
4
|
|
Retailing
|
6
|
|
Forest products
|
9
|
|
Aerospace / defense
|
11
|
|
Energy
|
12
|
|
Capital goods
|
14
|
|
Computers/ communication
|
16
|
|
Entertainment/ information
|
17
|
|
Consumer nondurables
|
18
|
|
Electric utilities
|
19
|
The analyst produces the following histogram of the industry codes for the companies:
a) What might account for the gaps seen in the histogram?
b) Is the histogram unimodal?
c) What advice might you give the analyst about the appropriateness of this display?