Exam 1: The Where, Why, and How of Data Collection

Descriptive statistical tools include graphs, charts, and numerical measures.

Sales data measured each week for the past twenty weeks are examples of time-series data.

Weekly sales for Amazon.com would be classified as which of the following?

The mayor of a large U.S. city is interested in addressing complaints from many property owners regarding recent property assessments. Many people feel that they are being overtaxed and that their assessments are too high. To study this issue, the mayor plans to hire consultants to randomly select homes in the city and have these homes independently assessed for value. However, she is concerned that the cost of sampling will be very high since the city is spread out over a wide geographical area. To potentially reduce the cost of sampling, which of the following statistical sampling techniques should be applied?

The primary purpose of performing a pre-test when developing a telephone or mail survey is to make sure that the respondents can understand the questions and are able to provide meaningful responses.

It is possible for the same survey questionnaire to yield both quantitative and qualitative data.

It is possible for an interviewer to interject bias into the data collection project by the way he or she asks the questions.

When the United States conducts a census that counts all people in the country, this is an example of using a sample.

When an accounting auditor randomly selects 20 accounts from all the accounts to check for accuracy, she has selected:

What are the advantages and disadvantages of open-end questions in either a written survey or a personal interview?

Flavors of ice cream (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, etc.) are an example of nominal data.

Of the following techniques for collecting data, which one is generally considered the least costly to implement: experiments, telephone surveys, mail questionnaires, direct observation, personal interview?

The Biltmore Hotel manager is getting ready to make a presentation that she hopes will justify adding additional staff. As part of the presentation, she has constructed charts and graphs. The general type of statistical analysis she is using is:

A cell phone service provider has 14,000 customers. Recently, the sales department selected a random sample of 400 customer accounts and recorded the number of minutes of long distance time used during the previous billing period. The data for this variable is considered to be nominal since the values are based on sample data.

If a stratified random sample is to be conducted, which of the following is true?

Based on a survey of 400 students in a university in which 20 percent indicated that they were business majors. The university student newspaper reported that "20 percent of all the students at the university are business majors." This report is an example of:

On a survey, amount of education is recorded as some high school, high school graduate, some college, college graduate, etc. This is an example of ordinal data.

A small engine repair shop tracks the number of customers who call each day. This variable is a time- series variable and also ratio level.

A value computed from a population is called:

The Georgia Company, a pharmaceutical company, recently conducted a study in which 20 people were given a new drug and 20 other people were given a placebo. The objective was to determine whether there was a difference in pain relief between those using the new drug versus those using the placebo. The data collection used here is an example of an experiment.