# Help - Real world application :(

#### hobojojomofo

##### New Member
Hi everyone. I'm hoping someone can help me out or at least get me pointed in the right direction on my problem. It's pretty ironic that i cheated my way through college stats and now i have a problem i really want to solve so i can address it w/ my boss....I really wish i had payed attention !!!

OK, my problem (some numbers estimated):

A company has 80 employees. In a recent meeting, it was stated that annual bonuses were roughly 10% on average. We can base this 10% increase on an estimated salary of $30,000 for each of the 80 employees. 1 employee (me) got a 3% raise or$1000. What i'm looking to do is somehow figure out what kind of bonuses other employees got since the average was a 10% increase. Shouldn't my lousy 3% throw off an average quite a bit? How can i solve this??? Do i need to use Std Deviation? Interquartile range??? A pretty graph???? I am soo stumped??? Can anybody help??? or maybe solve

Thanks,
Chuck

#### raiza

##### New Member
u could be an outlier

hi
u got a 3 % means either someone got a 17% (thus averaging to 10%), or 7 of them got your 1% extra each thus a 11%, or six got 11, 11,11,11,11,12 or 5 got 11,11,11,11,13 or 4 got 11,11,11,14 or 12,13,11,11 and so on. this is assuming you are teh only person who got les than 10% if there are more like you, lets say Jack got 9%, then the 1% he lost was given to someone else. so unless you know who all got below 10% and by how much, you can tell. even if you DO know this info, from the total no. of employees available , you can work out combinations to get a picture of what could be the highest someone got, etc.

As an HR professional , i would suggest you talk it out with your boss about why he gave you such a bad rating , rather than sulk , and envy the one who got a better rating.

All the best to you, may you be the one with the 17% next time

Shine on!