HW #1: Intro Material

Which one of the following involves inferential statistics as opposed to descriptive statistics? In other words, which one involves a conclusion about the population, whereas the others simply describe data?

A local cable system using a sample of 500 subscribers estimates that forty percent of its subscribers watch a premium channel at least once per day

Respondents were asked, "What is your marital status? (single, divorced, etc.)" What type of variable is this?

Categorical

Statistic

Measured characteristic of a sample

A consumer group is concerned with the actual weight content of tomato soup cans produced by a company with a reputation for inaccurate content labels. So the consumer group selects cans and the variable they care about is the actual tomato soup content. What type of variable is this?

Quantitative

A marketing class of 50 students evaluated the instructor using the following scale: superior, good, average, poor, and inferior. The summary of the 50 evaluations showed the following survey results: 0% superior, 2% good, 6% average, 46% poor, and 46% inferior. Which one of the following involves inferential statistics as opposed to descriptive statistics? In other words, which one involves a conclusion about the population, whereas the others simply describe data?

The instructor is a below average teacher

Parameter

a numerical characteristic of the population

Sample

a subset of people or objects that exist within the entire set

Quantitative/Categorical Variable

indicates that a person or object belongs in a category

Quantitative Variable

indicates the amount of something

Population

the entire set of people or objects of interest