DESCRIPTIVE AND INFERENTIAL STATISTICS

1) The last four semesters an instructor taught Intermediate Algebra, the following numbers of people passed the class.
17 19 4 20

Which of the following conclusions can be obtained from purely descriptive measures and which can be obtained by inferential methods? a) The last four semesters the instructor taught Intermediate Algebra, an average of 15 people passed the class. b) The next time the instructor teaches Intermediate Algebra, we can expect approximately 15 people to pass the class. c) This instructor will never pass more than 20 people in an Intermediate Algebra class. d) The last four semesters the instructor taught Intermediate Algebra, no more than 20 people passed the class. e) Only 5 people passed one semester because the instructor was in a bad mood the entire semester. f) The instructor passed 20 people the last time he taught the class to keep the administration off of his back for poor results. g) The instructor passes so few people in his Intermediate Algebra classes because he doesn't like teaching that class.

2) During the last week, a baseball player recorded the following number of hits.
Sun 2 Mon 1 Tues 4 Wed 3 Thurs 0 Fri 3 Sat 1

Which of the following conclusions can be obtained from purely descriptive methods and which can be obtained by inferential methods? a) Tony will never have more than 4 hits in a game. b) Tony had 0 hits on Thursday because he used a bat that belonged to another player. c) During the last week, Tony averaged 2 hits per game. d) Tony is a better hitter than any other baseball player. e) Tony had the same total number of hits in the first 3 games as he did in the last 4 games.

Answers 1. a) This conclusion can be obtained from purely descriptive measures. We can verify from the data provided that the actual average for these four semesters is 15. b) This solution requires inferential methods. Although it may seem reasonable that the next semester will be similar to the previous four, we have no way of knowing until the dust actually settles. c) This conclusion requires inferential methods. Although this instructor did not pass more than 20 students in the previous four semesters, we have no way of knowing if this will hold true in the future. d) This conclusion can be obtained from purely descriptive methods. We can verify from the actual data that 20 or fewer students passed in each of the four previous semesters. e) This conclusion requires inferential methods. Although the instructor may have indeed been in a bad mood for the entire semester, we can not verify this from the data or statements. f) This conclusion requires inferential methods. Although the instructor may have been trying to keep the administration off of his back, we can not verify this from the data or statements. g) This conclusion requires inferential methods. Although this instructor may dislike teaching Intermediate Algebra, we can not verify this from the data or statements.

2.

a) This conclusion requires inferential methods. Although Tony did not have more than 4 hits in any of the games last week, we can not say that he will never have more than 4 hits in a game. b) This conclusion requires inferential methods. Although Tony may have been using another player's bat, we can not verify this from the data or statements.

c) This conclusion can be obtained from purely descriptive methods. We can verify from the data that Tony averaged 2 its per game for the last week. d) This conclusion requires inferential methods. Although Tony may be the best hitter in baseball, we can not verify this from the data or statements. It calls for some inference on our part. e) This conclusion can be obtained from purely descriptive methods. We can verify from the data that Tony had 7 hits on the first 3 days and 7 hits on the other 4 days.

A variable is not only something that we measure, but also something that we can manipulate and something we can control for. TYPES OF VARIABLES INDEPENDENT variable (experimental or predictor variable) is a variable that is being manipulated in an experiment in order to observe the effect on a DEPENDENT variable OR outcome variable. Example: A tutor asks 100 students to complete a math test. The tutor wants to know why some students perform better than others. She thinks that it might be because of two reasons: (1) some students spend more time reviewing for their test; and (2) some students are naturally more intelligent than others. The tutor decides to investigate the effect of review time and intelligence on the test performance of the 100 students. The dependent and independent variables for the study are: Dependent Variable: Test Mark (measured from 0 to 100) Independent Variables: Review time (measured in hours) Intelligence (measured using IQ score)

Categorical and Continuous Variables

Categorical variables are also known as discrete or qualitative variables. Categorical variables : nominal, ordinal or dichotomous. Nominal variables - have two or more categories but do not have an intrinsic order. Examples: a. Type of property can be categorized into houses, condos, co-ops or bungalows. "type of property" is a nominal variable with 4 categories Of note, the different categories of a nominal variable can also be referred to as groups or levels of the nominal variable. b. Another example of a nominal variable would be classifying where people live in the Philippines by region.

Dichotomous variables are nominal variables which have only two categories or levels. For example: gender: "male" or "female". This is an example of a dichotomous variable (and also a nominal variable).

Another example: ownership of a mobile phone is either "Yes" or "No". Type of property may be dichotomous and classified as either residential or commercial. Ordinal variables: variables that have two or more categories just like nominal variables only the categories can also be ordered or ranked. Answers to a question if they liked the policies of the new government may be "Not very much", "OK" or "Yes, a lot" While we can rank the levels, we cannot place a "value" to them; we cannot say that "OK" is twice as positive as "Not very much" for example. Continuous variables are also known as quantitative variables. Continuous variables : interval or ratio variables. Interval variables are variables for which their central characteristic is that they can be measured along a continuum and they have a numerical value. Interval variables are measured on a linear scale and can take on positive or negative values. Example: temperature measured in degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. So the difference between 20C and 30C is the same as 30C to 40C. Ratio variables are interval variables but with the added condition that 0 (zero) of the measurement indicates that there is none of that variable. Ratio variables are continuous positive measurements on a nonlinear scale. Temperature measured in degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit is NOT a ratio variable because 0C does not mean there is no temperature. Temperature measured in Kelvin is a ratio variable as 0 Kelvin (often called absolute zero) indicates that there is no temperature whatsoever. Other examples of ratio variables include height, mass, distance and many more. * The name "ratio" reflects the fact that you can use the ratio of measurements. Example, a distance of ten metres is twice the distance of 5 metres.