Inquiring Minds Want to Know

For each of the scenarios below.

  1. Design a study to investigate the question.

    1. What will your data be like? (What variables? Are they categorical or quantitative? Is there an explanatory variable? a response variable?)
    2. Is your design an observational study or an experiment?

  2. Determine the parameter(s) of interest.

  3. State the null and alternative hypotheses. Do this both in words and using mathematical notation.

  1. What sort of plot would you make to investigate your data? What R command would make that plot? (You don’t have data, so you won’t be able to run this R command.)

Note: For some of these there may be more than one appropriate study design, but you should not choose a poor design when a better design is available.

Gender discrimation in promotion decisions?

Question: Are females discriminated against in promotion decisions made by male managers?”

Finger Tapping and Caffeine

Question: If you drink caffeine, will you be able to tap your finger faster 2 hours later?

Fair Coin?

Question: Does flipping a coin really have a 50-50 chance of coming up heads?

Smiles and Leniency

Question: Will college disciplinary panels be more lenient if you smile in the photo that is attached to your case paperwork?

Arsenic in Chicken

Arsenic-based chicken feed is used in the US (but banned in Europe). A super market chain wants to ensure that the chicken it sells has no more than 80 ppb (parts per billion) of arsenic (on average). How do they test the chicken that comes from one of their suppliers to decide if they should continue doing business with them?

Dogs and Ownwers

Question: Do dogs resemble their owners?