Business Week recently reported that L. G. Philips LCD Co. would complete a new factory in Paju, South Korea. It will be the world’s largest maker of liquidcrystal display panels. The arrival of the plant means that flat-panel LCD televisions would become increasingly affordable. The average retail cost of a 20′′ LCD television in 2000 was $5,139. To obtain what the average retail cost of a 37′′ LCD was in 2008, a survey yielded the following data (in $U.S.):

606.70 558.12 625.82 533.70 464.37 511.15 400.56 538.20 531.64 632.14 474.86 567.46 588.39 528.78 610.32 564.71 912.68 475.87 545.25 589.15

a. Calculate the mean cost for these data.

b. Examine the data presented. Choose an appropriate measure of the center of the data, justify the choice, and calculate the measure.

c. The influence an observation has on a statistic may be calculated by deleting the observation and calculating the difference between the original statistic and the statistic with the data point removed. The larger the difference, the more influential the data point. Identify the data points that have the most and the least influence in the calculation of the sample mean.