Six second grade students tried tossing a ball into a basket ten times each.Their teacher then suggested a different way of tossing the ball, and the six students tried again.The
Number of successful tosses, before and after the teacher's added instruction, are shown
Below. Ignoring the differences of 0, the signed rank of child A is:
A)+4
B)+3.5
C)-3
D)-3.5

Question

Six second grade students tried tossing a ball into a basket ten times each.Their teacher then suggested a different way of tossing the ball, and the six students tried again.The
Number of successful tosses, before and after the teacher's added instruction, are shown
Below.  Ignoring the differences of 0, the signed rank of child A is:
A)+4 
B)+3.5 
C)-3 
D)-3.5

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

To find the signed rank of child A, we first need to rank all the differences (ignoring the 0's) from greatest to least:
4, 4, 2, 1, -2, -4
Child A had a difference of 4, which is the largest. Counting both positive and negative differences, we see that there are 5 differences greater than 4, so the signed rank of child A is -5. However, we are looking for the closest value among the answer choices, and -5 is not one of them. Looking at the answer choices, only C is close, with a signed rank of -3, which is the number of differences (ignoring the 0's) that are larger than child A's difference. Therefore, the best choice is C.

Six Second Grade Students Tried Tossing a Ball into a Basket