STAT 110 ~ Assignment #1 (Due Tuesday, July 13th)



STAT 110 ~ Assignment #1 (Due Friday, May 12th )

1. Many hotels leave customer satisfaction surveys in hotel rooms for guests to fill out.

a) Do you expect the views expressed on the forms to be representative? Why or why not? (1 pt.)

b) In what direction would you expect the results to be biased? (1 pt.)

c) What useful information might you as a hotel manager hope to extract from this source? (1 pt.)

2. In the United States in 1990, one in every four black males between 20 and 29 was in prison or on parole. New Zealand Maori make up only 10% of the population, but nearly 50% of the prison population. Australian aborigines are 15 times more likely to be in jail than the rest of the population. Canadian Indians are heavily overrepresented in Canadian prisons. For some people, statistics of this type reinforce ethnic stereotypes. In all of these cases, the ethnic groups referred to have much larger proportions in the lower socioeconomic groups.

a) How could you go about finding out whether these numbers can be explained simply by poverty? (3 pts.)

There is another aspect of imprisonment. Not only do you have to be convicted of a criminal offense, you also have to be sentenced to prison. Many people have a strong suspicion that the sentencing process itself is often racist. In answering the next question consider how you might conduct a study to determine if “sentencing is racist”.

b) Consider what issues might be involved in answering the question “Is sentencing racist?” and the types of information one might want to try to resolve them. (3 pts.)

3. An experiment was carried out to measure the effect of growth hormone on girls affected by a growth disorder called Turner’s syndrome. All 34 girls in the study were given the growth hormone. Their heights were measured at the time the hormone was first administered and again one year later & their growth was determined. What are some problems with a study conducted in this way? (2 pts.)

4. A survey of high school principals taken after the “No Child Left Behind” Act was enacted. The survey revealed that one principal in five was under medication for stress and almost half had visited doctors because of the pressure they were under. These figures came from the 250 questionnaires returned from the 2500 that were sent out to randomly selected principals from across the United States. How reliable do you think the results are and why? (2 pts.)

5. As part of a study of students taking Introduction to Business (BUSA 106) the following variables were measured for each student. Classify each variable according to its data type. (6 pts.)

a) Class (e.g. Freshman)

b) Gender

c) High school rank

d) ACT

e) Major

f) GPA

g) Current credit hours

h) Ethnicity

i) Final exam score

j) Final grade

k) Absent days

l) Number of cases studies completed

6. Scan the newspaper, a weekly news magazine, or search the Internet for an article that contains numerical data. The data might be a summary of the results of a public opinion survey or the summary of some recently conducted research. For the article you found answer the following questions: (6 pts. Total)

a) Do the data represent a sample or an entire population? If a sample has been taken, clearly identify both the sample and the population. (2 pts.)

b) Name at least two variables that whose value was measured in the study. What type of data (numerical/quantitative or categorical/qualitative) do these variables represent?

(2 pts.)

c) If sample has been taken, is it likely to be representative of the population? (1 pt.)

d) If a sample has been observed, does the article present an explicit (or implied) inference about the population of interest? If so, state the inference made in the article.

(1 pt.) (Note: an inference is a conclusion reached ( e.g. smoking increases risk lung cancer)

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