Reference no: EM132365585

Flatulence Case Study -

Flatulence: Are you embarrassed by your flatus?

Research conducted by: Shannon E. Collins, UH-D undergraduate, Faculty Advisor: Heidi Ziemer.

Case study prepared by: Shannon E. Collins

Overview - The purpose of this study was to find out whether or not people are embarrassed by their flatulence. The participants were 35 University of Houston - Downtown students. Flatulence is a normal part of being human, but it can cause an alarming rate of embarrassment in certain situations. How many times have you been subjected to the unpleasant odor emitted from someone around you? Medical research indicates that it is normal to have anywhere from 7 to 20 episodes of gas in a day.

Would you believe that women produce more of the bad smelling stuff than men do, and that women are more likely to complain to their doctors about the smell of their flatulence? The smell comes from sulfur gasses, the most offensive of which is hydrogen sulfide; it smells like rotten eggs. Still, everybody does it, we just don't know how embarrassed they are by it.

Questions to Answer - Are people without male siblings more embarrassed by their flatulence than people with one or more male siblings? Do people that come from households where flatulence was acceptable report less embarrassment than people that come from households where it was not acceptable? Are women or men more embarrassed by their flatus?

Design Issues - Embarrassment scores were reported on 14 different measures and tallied as a total embarrassment score, then divided into seven categories, producing one number per category. Only the scores on the seven categories are reported here. The data in this research is self report data, and because the topic is sensitive some people may have been less than honest about their reported flatulence.

Exercises

1. Plot a histogram of the variable "perday." [Create a grouped frequency table, determine class intervals and how you decided on those intervals. Please show all of your work.]

2. Based on the histogram, do you think the mean or median of this variable is larger? Calculate the mean and median to see if you are right.

3. What is the range for the of the variable "perday?"

4. Create a stem and leaf plot of the variable "howlong."What can you say about the shape of the distribution?

Attachment:- Assignment Files - Flatulence Case Study.rar