Statistics Homework – 6 Questions

1. 
Evaluate
completely the following statement:  “The
issue is not whether there is variation, but whether the variation is
significant”. Be specific with data types from the significance and
t-tests, analysis of variances with perhaps AVOVA, and nominal data.  Your answer should include an understanding
of statistical confidence and the null hypothesis.

2. 
Can
you draw a Spearman’s correlation between the variables specific age and job
satisfaction?  Be specific about why or
why not.

3. 
You
desire to do a study of ax murderers in American prisons.  A preliminary study reveals that the mean IQ of
a random sample of 156 ax murderers is 80, with a standard deviation of
24.  Perform a 95% confidence interval on
the mean IQ of ax murderers, and provide the interval.  What exactly does this confidence interval
tell me?  (Be scientific, not
sociological.)

4. 
You
desire to do a survey of likely voters in Michigan to determine whether they
would support a tax increase to subsidize the building of a new General Motors
facility in the state.  a) Formulate 3
pertinent questions that would be useful to ask in this survey, along with possible
answer choices for your respondents (don’t ask for demographics only…no
questions on gender, age, etc.).  Why
would you ask these questions?  b)
To whom
would you distribute your survey?  Why
would this be an appropriate sample group? c)What kind of literature base
would you use to underlie your statistical information? Cite three examples of
relevant scholarly literature.  Be very
specific about all of these answers.

5. 
I
wish to conduct an experiment to determine the effectiveness of a new reading
program for third grade children in my local school district who need help with
reading skills.  What parameters would I
need to establish on the test (# of samples, who would conduct the test, test
conditions, etc.)?  Be as specific as
you can (you don’t need to be educational experts to answer this).  What would be an appropriate statistical
test for this data and research question? 
Why would this be more appropriate than some other statistical
test? 

6. 
You are designing a
user interface for an information system and you have created two prototypes of
the interface. You have two ways to evaluate the interface: a) User Preference,
or b) Productivity. You’ve done a survey of the end users with these two
prototypes and discovered that the users don’t prefer one over the other. As a
result, the decision about which prototype to use will depend on productivity.
The time it takes users to perform a task is a good measure of productivity.
You invited 30 users, and each user performed the same task using both prototypes.
You collected data on the time it took for each participant to finish the task
using each prototype.  Perform an ANOVA,
and report the results in a concise memo to your team leader. Write down your
interpretation of the results and the conclusion you’ve reached in the memo.