NAME: 2004 New Car and Truck Data TYPE: Sample SIZE: 428 observations, 19 variables DESCRIPTIVE ABSTRACT: Specifications are given for 428 new vehicles for the 2004 year. The variables recorded include price, measurements relating to the size of the vehicle, and fuel efficiency. SOURCE: _Kiplinger's Personal Finance_, December 2003, vol. 57, no. 12, pp. 104-123, http:/www.kiplinger.com (permission to post on the JSE Web site kindly granted by PARS International Corporation, 102 West 38th Street, New York, NY 10018) VARIABLE DESCRIPTIONS: Columns Variables 1- 45 Vehicle Name 47 Sports Car? (1=yes, 0=no) 49 Sport Utility Vehicle? (1=yes, 0=no) 51 Wagon? (1=yes, 0=no) 53 Minivan? (1=yes, 0=no) 55 Pickup? (1=yes, 0=no) 57 All-Wheel Drive? (1=yes, 0=no) 59 Rear-Wheel Drive? (1=yes, 0=no) 61- 66 Suggested Retail Price, what the manufacturer thinks the vehicle is worth, including adequate profit for the automaker and the dealer (U.S. Dollars) 68- 73 Dealer Cost (or "invoice price"), what the dealership pays the manufacturer (U.S. Dollars) 75- 77 Engine Size (liters) 79- 80 Number of Cylinders (=-1 if rotary engine) 82- 84 Horsepower 86- 87 City Miles Per Gallon 89- 90 Highway Miles Per Gallon 92- 95 Weight (Pounds) 97- 99 Wheel Base (inches) 101-103 Length (inches) 105-106 Width (inches) Values are aligned and delimited with blanks. Missing values are denoted with *. RELATED DATASETS: A similar dataset appeared as one of the sample datasets shipped with the _Student Edition of Execustat_ (PWS-KENT 1990). Another similar dataset, submitted by Robin Lock, may be found in the _Journal of Statistics Education_ dataset archive at http://www.amstat.org/publications/ jse/datasets/93cars.dat. The accompanying article "1993 New Car Data", Journal of Statistics Education, vol. 1, no. 1, by Lock (1993) may be found at the site http://www.amstat.org/v1n1/datasets.lock.html. COMMENTS ON MISSING VALUES: Length and Width of pickup trucks were not given in _Kiplinger's_. Possible updates to the dataset (viewable on a vehicle by vehicle basis) may be found at the site http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/carfinder/; these updates may allow some of the missing values to be filled in. PEDAGOGICAL NOTES: This is a multi-purpose dataset that can be used at many points in an introductory statistics course. It includes several numeric variables which can be examined across a choice of several categorical variables. Students tend to be familiar with most of the variables. Furthermore, they also tend to be able to anticipate and pose explanations for many of the relationships between variables. Suggested Retail Price/Dealer Cost and the two MPG variables are popular choices as response variables. One suggested exploration - try fitting the MPG variables as linear in reciprocal weight (clear outliers to this strongly linear pattern are the hybrid gas/electric cars). Other explorations are suggested in the article of Lock (1993) referenced above. SUBMITTED BY: Roger W. Johnson Department of Mathematics & Computer Science South Dakota School of Mines and Technology 501 East St. Joseph Street Rapid City, South Dakota 57701 (605) 355-3450 Roger.Johnson@sdsmt.edu