2.44 Knowing homicide victims The table summarizes responses of 4383 subjects in a recent General Social Survey to the question, “Within the past 12 months, how many people have you known personally that were victims of homicide?”

a. To find the mean, it is necessary to give a score to the “4 or more” category. Find it, using the score 4.5. (In practice, you might try a few different scores, such as 4, 4.5, 5, 6, to make sure the resulting mean is not highly sensitive to that choice.)

b. Find the median. Note that the “4 or more” category is not problematic for it.

c. If 1744 observations shift from 0 to 4 or more, how do the mean and median change?

d. Why is the median the same for parts b and

c, even though the data are so different?

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Number of People You Have Known Who Were Victims of Homicide Number of Victims 0 1 23 4 or more Total Frequency 3944 279 97 40 23 4383