Question 1.48

1.48 Forbes rankings of best countries for business.

bestbus

The Forbes website ranks countries based on their characteristics that are favorable for business.21 One of the characteristics that it uses for its rankings is trade balance, defined as the difference between the value of a country’s exports and its imports. A negative trade balance occurs when a country imports more than it exports. Similarly, the trade balance will be positive for a country that exports more than it imports. Data related to the rankings are given for 145 countries.

  1. Describe the distribution of trade balance using the mean and the standard deviation.
  2. Do the same using the median and the quartiles.
  3. Using only information from parts (a) and (b), give a description of the data. Do not look at any graphical summaries or other numerical summaries for this part of the exercise.