All that Glitter is Gold Your parents have received a lump sum payment of $1 million from their retirement fund.

All that Glitter is Gold Your parents have received a lump sum payment of $1 million from their retirement fund. Being risk-averse individuals, your parents would like to invest at least one third of the money into precious metal such as gold. Their way of buying gold is to buy a physical gold bar from the bank and store it in their cupboard at home. Being a well-read individual, you advise them that those days of keeping physical gold is long gone and the trend now is to purchase 'paper gold'. You explained to them that the 'paper gold' is also known as Gold ETF (exchange traded fund), which is a representation of physical gold that might be in a dematerialised or paper form, which gives an option to invest in gold online. These units are traded in exchange of a single stock of any company. Unlike physical gold, Gold ETF is a lot easier to invest because there is no fear of theft, storage or expenses like those in lockers or gold making charges. There are several Gold ETFs available in the market, with the more well-known ones such as SPDR Gold Shares, iShares Gold Trust and ETS Physical. Over a meal, you had some argument with your parents whom are sceptical about investing in Gold ETF, while you insist confidently that Gold ETF's performance is the same as physical gold (spot gold), but with all the conveniences. Your sibling, Maryann, whom coincidentally works at a local jewellery shop sided with your parents' argument and downloaded a set of historical spot gold prices and ETF prices for SPDR Gold Shares, and challenged you to prove that they are the same. The spot price is simply the price at which a commodity could be transacted and delivered on right now.

The historical spot gold prices are provided in the denomination of per ounce basis, while the SPDR Gold Shares prices are in the denomination of per one-tenth ounce basis. Please use the Excel software and the data file "BUS105e_GBA_Data.xlsx" to answer the following questions.

Question 1

Identify and describe the appropriate measures of location and dispersion. Interpret your preliminary observations to your parents, bearing in mind that they have not completed any formal education. Present the relevant information concisely and clearly for discussion. (15 marks)