BUSI 2305: CH. 1 ASSESS.
Which of the following is not an example of a statistic?
A list of the profits earned last year for 100 companies in the United States A list of profits earned is raw data, not a statistic. Unless the data collected for the 100 companies is organized, analyzed, or summarized in some way, it is just raw data.
Which of the following is true?
No matter what your career, you need a knowledge of statistics to understand the world. There are at least three reasons for studying statistics: 1) data are collected everywhere and require statistical knowledge to make the information useful, 2) statistical techniques are used to make professional and personal decisions, and 3) no matter what your career, you will need a knowledge of statistics to understand the world and to be conversant in your career. An understanding of statistics and statistical methods will help you make more effective personal and professional decisions.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Act requires employers to classify their employees by gender and national origin. Which level of measurement is this?
Nominal Gender and national origin are labels with no natural order and cannot be ranked or ordered.
Which one of the following is not an example of discrete data?
Number of miles between New York City and Chicago Discrete variables can assume only certain values, and there are gaps between the values. Miles are not discrete because they can be measured with any number of decimal point values.
A group of women tried five brands of fingernail polish and ranked them according to preference. What level of measurement is this?
Ordinal The rankings are ordinal. While the rankings indicate which brand is preferred over another, they do not measure how much more they are preferred.
What type of variable is the number of robberies reported in your city?
Quantitative The number of robberies is counted and must be a whole number, such as 0, 500, or 3,125,874.
A university wishes to conduct a student survey. In one of the questions students are asked to mark their gender as either male or female. Gender is an example of the
nominal scale. Gender is a nominal variable because you can only classify the students into categories, and these categories have no natural order or ranking.
The main purpose of descriptive statistics is to
summarize data in a useful and informative manner. Descriptive statistics summarize existing data. It does not collect new data or draw conclusions about a population.
When TV advertisements report that "2 out of 3 dentists surveyed indicated they would recommend Brand X toothpaste to their patients," an informed consumer may question the conclusion because
the advertisement does not include the total number of dentists surveyed. The ad implies that most dentists would recommend the product. However, without knowing anything about how many dentists were selected, and how they were selected, it would be difficult to accept the results of the survey.
Ethical statisticians
use honesty and integrity when summarizing, analyzing, and interpreting data. The ethical practice of statistics requires that one uses honesty and integrity when summarizing, analyzing, and interpreting data. Reporting only data that matches your desired findings, withholding unfavorable information, or not being honest about limitations of your analysis or possible sources of error are not ethical practices.
