Question

Performance ratings of government agencies.The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requires government agencies to produce annual performance and accounting reports (PARS) each year. A research team at George Mason University evaluated the quality of the PARS for 24 government agencies (The Public Manager, summer 2008). Evaluation scores ranged from 12 (lowest) to 60 (highest). The PARS evaluation scores for two consecutive years are shown in the next table.

a.Construct a scatterplot for the data. Do you detect atrend in the data?

b.Based on the graph, identify one or two agencies that hadgreater than expected PARS evaluation scores for year 2.

Short answer

(a) The graph is given below:

(a) State and USAID

Step-by-step solution

Constructing the scatter plot and detecting the trend

We will plot the data for Year 1 on the x-axis and the data for Year 2 on the y-axis.

The graph is given below:

Although the data is quite varied, we can notice a general upward sloping trend.There is a positive correlation between the scores from years 1 and 2.

Identifying the agency with an unexpectedly high score in year 2

Based on the points in the graph, (31, 50) are in correspondence to State. In the first year, it scored 31 points, and then in year 2, it jumped to 50.Therefore,State Agency has an unexpectedly high score in year 2.

Another agency with an unexpectedly high score in year 2 is USAID,with 32 points in year 1 and 42 points in year 2.