T.7 Descriptive statistics questions for IB Business Management

Boty Nádraží is a shoe shop near the main railway station in Brno, Czech Republic. Its owner, Petr Svoboda, is deciding how many pairs of a new men’s walking boot to order in each size. Table 1 shows last month’s sales of a similar boot. Petr’s assistant has calculated that the mean size sold was 40.61.

Table 1: Pairs of men’s walking boots sold last month, by size

Identify the modal size, and explain why it is more useful to Petr than the mean when ordering stock.

Brightwell Schools is a private company that runs two international schools in Malaysia. The principal of the Kuala Lumpur campus, Mr Tan, makes all major decisions himself and expects teachers to follow school policies closely. The principal of the Penang campus, Dr Nair, sets up teacher working groups to decide on timetables, assessment and school events. In June 2026 all teachers completed the same staff survey. Each statement was scored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 10 (strongly agree).

Table 1: Mean scores for each survey statement, by campus

Bluefields Lionfish Collective (BLC)

Read the resources and answer the questions that follow.

Bluefields Lionfish Collective (BLC) is a fishers’ co-operative in Bluefields Bay, Westmoreland, Jamaica, set up in 2019 with help from a marine conservation NGO. Lionfish are not native to the Caribbean: they have no natural predators there and eat huge numbers of young reef fish, so catching them protects the reef. BLC’s 60 members, mostly small-boat fishers, catch lionfish with spears, and eight women members are trained to remove the fish’s venomous spines safely and fillet it. The meat is white, mild and safe to eat. BLC’s mission is “eat them to beat them – and keep our fishers fishing”.

Image: a striped red-and-white lionfish with long, feathery spines swimming over a coral reef; beside it, a plate of golden lionfish fillets with festival dumplings and a slice of lime. Caption: “Bluefields Lionfish – eat them to beat them”.

Resource 1 – News article from the *Westmoreland Coastal News*

Fishers turn invader into income

Catches of reef fish such as snapper and parrotfish have fallen sharply around Jamaica, and many fishers have left the sea. Lionfish offer an alternative – but many Jamaicans have never eaten one and fear the venomous spines. “People hear ‘poison fish’ and walk away,” says BLC chair Delroy Campbell. Last year BLC caught 18 000 lb of lionfish but sold only 11 000 lb.

Table 1: Average catch per fishing trip in Bluefields Bay (lb)

Resource 2 – Social media posts from two people who tried lionfish

Kayla, a tourist from Canada: Had lionfish tacos at a beach bar in Negril – delicious AND good for the reef! Why isn’t this on every menu in Jamaica? [1/2]

Andre, a food blogger in Kingston: Tried BLC’s lionfish escovitch at a market. Tastes like snapper, honestly. But my auntie wouldn’t touch it – she thinks you can get poisoned from the meat. Somebody needs to educate people! [2/2]

Resource 3 – Internal email from Delroy Campbell to BLC members’ committee

From: Delroy Campbell, Chair

To: Members’ committee

Subject: Before we spend JMD 4.2 million

We want to build a freezer and filleting room (JMD 4.2 million), mainly to supply hotels and restaurants with frozen fillets. But we do not really know who will buy. So far our “research” is a tasting stall at Savanna-la-Mar market (results attached) and talks with six hotel buyers.

A market research company in Montego Bay has quoted JMD 850 000 for a survey of 400 consumers chosen at random across four parishes, plus focus groups. Alternatively, our members could carry out a quota sample survey ourselves for about JMD 120 000.

Some members also want to look at exporting frozen fillets to Florida, but that needs US food-safety approval.

CONFIDENTIAL: this email and any attachments are intended only for the named recipients.

Resource 4 – Results of BLC’s tasting stall at Savanna-la-Mar market (60 people who stopped at the stall)

Resource 5 – Notes from interviews with six hotel and restaurant buyers

• Two large hotels would buy about 1 500 lb of fillets a year each at about JMD 4 000 per lb, if supply is reliable and fillets are frozen and vacuum-packed.

• Guests like the “save the reef” story; one hotel would print it on its menu.

• Three buyers worried about safety and consistent sizes; one said lionfish is “too much trouble”.

Resource 6 – Selected figures

Tõrvik Labs OÜ is a software start-up in Tallinn, Estonia, with 12 employees, including its two founders. Its job advertisements say that the “average salary” at Tõrvik Labs is €5 200 a month. This is the mean salary, which includes the founders’ salaries of €14 000 a month each. The median salary is €3 100 a month.

Explain two limitations of using the mean salary in Tõrvik Labs’ job advertisements.

Hollenstein Components

Hollenstein Components (HC) has manufactured metal parts for car makers in Kalindor, a country in central Europe, since 1978. It employs 640 people at a factory in Brenholm, a former steel town. HC’s managing director, Jana Kovář, is preparing a five-year plan and has collected the national employment data shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Employment by sector in Kalindor (000s of workers)

Jana has also learned that two car makers that buy from HC plan to move some assembly to lower-cost countries, and that a software company has opened a research centre in Brenholm, recruiting engineers from HC.

Nile Cold Chain

[1] Nile Cold Chain (NCC) is a private limited company in Alexandria, Egypt, that stores and transports chilled and frozen food for supermarkets and restaurants. It employs about 300 people in its warehouses, its fleet of refrigerated trucks and its head office.

[2] More warehouse employees have been resigning, and the human resources (HR) manager, Hana Mostafa, ran an anonymous engagement survey. Employees rated the statement “I feel valued at work” from 1 (strongly disagree) to 10 (strongly agree). The head office team’s mean score was 7.4. Only seven of the 60 warehouse employees on the night shift responded, giving scores of 6, 4, 7, 3, 8, 5 and 2.

[3] In the free-text comments, warehouse employees wrote about working in temperatures of −20 °C, the lack of a proper break room and supervisors who “only speak to us when something goes wrong”. The chief executive, Omar Saleh, said that a mean score of 5 is “acceptable” and that no action is needed.