BSTAT 3321 - Chapter 1

Statistics is used to...

to make informed decisions based on data.

A professor's gender (male, female) represents ______ data and a professor's rank (assistant, full) represents _____ data.

nominal, ordinal

What is an example of an interval scale?

The outside temperature (in degrees Fahrenheit).

The ordinal scale of data measurement is.....

more sophisticated than the nominal scale.

Which of the following is an example of cross-sectional data?

Results of market research testing consumer preferences for soda

Data that are collected by recording a characteristic of a subject over several time periods are referred to as _____ data.

time series.

Data that are collected about many subjects at the same point in time or without regard to differences in times are known as _____ data.

cross-sectional.

In general, we use sample data because.....

obtaining data from the population is often an expensive process

Northern University wants to determine the average starting salary for last year's graduates of its College of Business. What is the population from which the survey is taken?

All of last year's graduates from Northern's College of Business who started working.

Consider the following variable: the color of a car in a parking lot. This variable is best categorized as a _____ variable.

qualitative.

With nominal data, you can

categorize the data.

What is a sample?

a subset of the population

Samples are primarily used to...

make inferences about population parameters.

The branch of statistics that summarizes important aspects of a data set is often referred to as....

descriptive statistics

The branch of statistics that draws conclusions about a large set of data based on a smaller set of data is often referred to as ______ statistics.

inferential.

A respondent of a survey is asked whether the Philadelphia Flyers' performance in the last game was excellent, good, fair, or poor. The person indicates that the performance was "good." This is an example of...

ordinal data.

What estimation requires sampling?

U.S. Employment Rate

A recent survey of 200 small firms (annual revenue less than $10 million) asked whether an increase in the minimum wage would cause the firm to decrease capital spending. Possible responses to the survey question were: "Yes," "No," or "Don't Know." This data is best classified as...

nominal scale

At the end of a semester, college students evaluate their instructors by assigning them to one of the following categories: Excellent, Good, Average, Below Average, and Poor. The measurement scale is a(n) ____________.

ordinal scale

What variable is quantitative?

Temperature

What is an example of quantitative data?

Google's closing stock price.

An analyst studies a data set of the 2011 year-end book value per share for all companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange. This data set is best described as

cross-sectional data

A population consists of

all items of interest in a statistical problem

The Fahrenheit scale for measuring temperature would be classified as...

interval scale.

For which of the following population parameters is sampling not necessary?

the average height of NBA players

Your business statistics class had a test last week. The average score for the class is an example of

descriptive statistics

Which of the following is an example of qualitative data?

your last name

In inferential statistics, we calculate statistics of sample data to...

estimate unknown population parameters AND

conduct tests about unknown population parameters.

The branch of statistical studies called descriptive statistics summarizes important aspects of a data set.