# determining mean... help?

#### mrsjar

##### New Member
Im looking for the mean wage per employee per hour.

info is as follows.

hourly wage numbr of employees

$4.-4.50 255$4.51-$5.50 345$5.51-$7.50 625$7.51- and above 275
-------
1500

there was other info in the problem but i THINK it was added to
confuse or smoke screen. What doyou think?

Last year the company had $395.50 in sales, cost of goods sold was$900,000,
annual payroll was $12,480,000. The company operated 52 weeks last year at standard work week of 40 hours. The researcher is overcome by the amountof data collected and now needs to dtermine the mean average wageper employee per hour. Would you use the weighted mean? i came up with 255(4.25)+345(5.)+ etc/ 1500 and came up with$6.23

any thoughts?

#### SerrenaC

##### New Member
That is how I would calculate it.

#### LynnLicorish

So we just dismiss the fact that the annual payroll is $12,480,000? #### JohnM ##### TS Contributor You could get a decent estimate using the table if it weren't for this: "$7.51- and above" 275

It's difficult to assign a value for this "range" because there is no upper bound.

#### ssd

##### New Member
The information is sufficient. Use the frequency (or number) of employees falling in each catagory of pay range as weights. Then, you can find the avarage payment/employee/hour just by calculating the weighted avarage using the class mid points. All other information given are useless including the annual payroll. For the above 7.51 information, you have to form a class of length equal to that of the preceeding class.
Mean= (4.25*255+5.005*345+6.505*625+8.505*275)/1500 =6.143
Pls check the calculations yourself.

Donot confuse with the fact that all the 1500 employees did not work for 52 weeks and 40 hour a week. The annual pay role comes in to play if avarage payment (which is different than mean wage) per employee/hour over the year is asked for. This value is 4.00 as calculated by John M.

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