An analysis of the monthly incentives received by 5 salesmen : The mea...
Hints to solve this question:
- Mean and Median = $7000. So, find the third highest incentive.
- Only one mode; mode = $12,000.
- Use hint 1 and hint 2 to find how many executives have got $12,000.
- Now compute the sum of incentives got by those who got neither $7000 nor $12000.
Step 1: Understanding the given data
- The arithmetic mean of the incentives is $7000.
- The median of the incentives is also $7000.
- There is only one mode and the mode is $12,000.
Step 2: Decoding Mean and Median
Let their incentives be a, b, c, d, and e such that a ≤ b ≤ c ≤ d ≤ e
Therefore, the median of these values is 'c'.
The median incentive is $7000. So, c = $7000.
Essentially, the incentives are __ __ 7000 __ __
The arithmetic mean of the incentives is $7000.
So, the sum of their incentives a + b + c + d + e = 5 * 7000 = $35,000
Step 3: Decoding Mode
There is only one mode amongst these 5 observations.
The mode is that value that appears with the maximum frequency.
Hence, $12,000 is the incentive received by the most number of salesmen.
So, the incentives are __ __ 7000, 12000, 12000
Step 4: Putting it all together
The incentive that c has got is $7000
The incentive received by d and e are 12,000 each
Therefore, c + d + e = 7000 + 12,000 + 12,000 = $31,000
Hence, a + b = 35,000 - 31,000 = $4000
As there is only one mode, the incentives received by a and b have to be different.
So, a received $1000 and b received $3000.
Maximum incentive: $12,000
Minimum incentive: $1000
Difference between maximum and minimum incentive: $11,000
Choice E is the correct answer.