Reference no: EM133501357

Question

1. In Chapter 1, we talked about data. Data is a fact or proposition used to draw conclusions or make a decision. In this experiment, the data showed that mothers who smoked during pregnancy made their babies have a higher risk of being born prematurely, but not have a higher risk of death. The article contained a table, which is an example of descriptive statistics. Descriptive statistics consists of organizing and summarizing data with numerical summaries, tables, and graphs. The study divided the population into two groups, smokers and non-smokers. This is an example of qualitative variables, and the amount of each group is an example of quantitative variables. Qualitative variables allow the classification of individuals based on some attribute or characteristic; while quantitative variables provide numerical measures of individuals and can be added or subtracted and provide meaningful results.

2. The topics from Chapter 1 of the text that were shown in this article were population, sample, explanatory variable, response variable, and observational study. The population being studied was US adults between the ages of 18-64. The sample that was studied was the 273,695 adults that completed the survey. This study was a good example of using an explanatory variable to show the affect on a response variable. The explanatory variable here was the amount of sleep an individual gets per night which is shown to have an affect on one's mental distress, or the response variable. This study was also performed as an observational study as the researcher was simply observing the behavior of the individuals as opposed to grouping the individuals to influence the outcome.