Baseball Players Salaries

How have salaries of major league baseball players changed from 1987 to 1997?

To answer this question, you are provided the salaries of all major league ball players for both 1987 and 1997. The salaries are reported in thousands of dollars.

Also provided are some output from statistical software.

The lowest salary in 1987 was

62 68 70 150 155 160 thousand

and the lowest salary in 1997 was
62 68 70 150 155 160 thousand

General Shape of the 1987 Salary Distribution

How would you describe the shape of the distribution of salaries for the players in 1987?
Modality:
unimodal bimodal flat

Tails:
normal tails long left tail long right tail short tails

Symmetry:
symmetric skew left skew right

Does the distribution of salaries appear to be roughly normal?
yes no

Comparison of 1987 to 1997 salaries

Does the distribution of salaries in 1987 appear to be similar in shape to the distribution for 1997?
yes no

About what percentage of players earned under $75,000 in 1987?
10 15 20 52

Although the salaries from 1987 and 1997 are very similar in shape, there are differences, for example the players in 1997 make more / about the same / less (Select One) than the players in 1987.

Find the following percentiles for each year.
Percentile 1987 1997
10th    
20th    
50th    
80th    
90th    

The distribution of salaries for baseball players in 1987 and 1997 are very similar. They have very long right tails, and are skewed heavily to the left. Nearly one in 5 players make about the minimum salary. Yet there are differences too.

Compare the percentiles in the table above to answer the following questions.

Shift
From 1987 to 1997 the median salary increased 200,000. If $200,000 was added to each of the 1987 salaries would the distribution look like the 1997 distribution?
yes no

Rescale
From 1987 to 1997 the median salary roughly doubled. If the 1987 salaries were doubled would its distribution roughly lineup with the 1997 distribution?
yes no

Shift and rescale
In 1987 the distance from the median to the 80th was about $500,000, and in 1997 it was about $2,000,000. The change increased 4 fold.

From 1987 to 1997 the distance from the 80th to the 90th percentile increased roughly
2 / 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 (Select one) fold.

Summarize your findings about the two salary distributions.