ISP 120 Out of Class Assignment 2

Percentages

1. The general sales tax on most items in the City of Chicago is 9.00%.

  1. The sales tax on expensive items can significantly raise the cost of the item you are buying.  What is the total cost when you purchase a car for $15,000?
  2. Let P be the price of an item, and let C be the total cost of the item including the sales tax.  Write a formula that expresses C in terms of P.

2. Open the file WorldUrbanPopulations.xls. This file contains data from the World Bank on the city populations of most of the countries in the world.  (A small number of countries whose data is incomplete are omitted for simplicity.) We would like to study the extent to which people live in cities internationally.   A person is considered to be an city dweller if he or she lives in a city, a suburb of a city, or a town with a population of 2,500 or more.  A "city" is a municipality with a population of more than 50,000 and with a population density greater than 1,000 people per square mile. A country is said to be "urbanized" if a large fraction of its population lives in urban areas.

  1. Determine the three countries had the highest city populations in 1996 and write their names and their city populations in your Word document. Use a complete sentence.
  2. Explain in a short well-written paragraph why the countries with the largest city populations are not necessarily the most urbanized.
  3. Add a column to your MS Excel / OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet that contains the percent of each country that lives in an urban area.  Sort the data on this column.  After sorting, paste a table containing the top ten most urbanized countries into your MS Word / OpenOffice Writer document.
  4. Using the Thematic Mapping Tool, make a shaded map showing the percent of urbanization internationally (use all countries).  Paste it into your Word/Writer document and in a short well-written paragraph describe the geographic patterns.  Discuss outliers, if any.
  5. What other data would you seek if you wanted to understand the extent to which people around the world live in cities?

3.  Open the file ticketprices.xls. This file contains information on various events in the city, their ticket costs, and any additional fees charged by the ticket source. 

     a. In B8 enter a formula for the total fee charged.  Fill in this formula sideways by clicking on the corner and dragging over to cell G8.  What formula did you enter in B8?

     b. What is the total cost of the ticket?  In B9 enter a formula for total ticket cost and fill sideways.  What formula did you enter in B9?

     c. The percent markup is the percent by which the original ticket price is increased by the fees.  In B10 enter the formula for Percent Markup and fill sideways.  Include one decimal place for these percentages. What formula did you enter in B10?  Now copy and paste the entire table into your word document. 

    d.  Does having the highest total fee guarantee that the ticket also had the highest markup?  Explain how there can be high fees and not a high percent markup.

    e. According to the percent markup, which ticket price almost doubled?

     f. If the final cost of an event was $54.40 and the percent markup was 28%, what was the original ticket price?  Show your work.

4.  Intel Corporation stock rose 67% from January to March 2000.In April it lost 24%. By how many percent was the price of the stock higher than in January in April after the loss?

5.  The average cost of producing a feature film rose 34% from 1997 to 1998.  From 1998 to 2001, however,  it fell by 11%.  What is the percentage change over the two periods combined, i.e.,  from 1997 to 2001?

6.  Because of losses by your employer, you agree to accept a temporary 10% pay cut. Your employer promises to give you a 10% pay raise after six months. Will the pay raise restore your original salary?

7. A stockbroker offers the following defense to angry investors: "I admit that the value of your investments fell 60% during my first year on the job. This year, however, their value has increased by 75%, so you are now 15% ahead! Evaluate the stockholder’s defense.