Use the data in COUNTYMURDERS to answer this question. Use only the year 1996. The variable murders is the number of murders reported in the county. The variable execs is the number of executions that took place of people sentenced to death in the given county. Most states in the United States have the death penalty, but several do not.

(i) How many counties are there in the data set? Of these, how many have zero murders? What percentage of counties have zero executions? (Remember, use only the 1996 data.)

(ii) What is the largest number of murders? What is the largest number of executions? Why is the average number of executions so small?

(iii) Compute the correlation coefficient between murders and execs and describe what you find.

(iv) You should have computed a positive correlation in part (iii). Do you think that more executions cause more murders to occur? What might explain the positive correlation?