The dividend yield on shareholders' funds of Australia's top 120 companies for the week ended Friday 10 July 2009 is recorded in the data file.

1. Column 1 stores the dividend yield for the top 1-40 companies ranked by market capitalisation

2. Column 2 stores those for the top 41-80 companies and

3. Column 3 for the top 81-120 companies.

To understand the meaning of these yields, consider 3.43% yield that was realised on the first company's shares in 2008. This means that $ 100 invested in the shares of that company at the beginning of 2008 would have yielded a profit of $3.43 over the year, leaving you with a total of $103.43 at the year's end. The data is also available to you in an excel spread-sheet for your convenience.

In the exercise that follows, you are required to complete your calculations using the manual methodology taught in class and may supplement it with the use of excel functions to verify calculations. This will also help you in your preparations for your final exams.

Required:

Question 1

Organise the data in appropriate class intervals and draw a histogram of the frequency distribution.

Question 2

Find the Mean, Median, Range, Standard Deviation and Coefficient of Variation of the yield for the top 40 Australian companies.

Question 3

Repeat the exercise outlined in Question 2 for data covering the top 41-80 companies and the top 81-120 companies

Question 4

Is there any major difference in the dividend yield between the three groups of companies?