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

Discuss the two major types of descriptive statistics.

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.

In this course,the term business statistics refers to the set of tools and techniques that are used to convert information into meaningful data.

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 professor hands out survey forms during her classes,where the population is all students attending the college.This is an example of:

Assuming that you are planning to collect data using an experiment,it will be very important to establish an appropriate survey design.

Statistics is a discipline that involves tools and techniques used to describe data and draw conclusions.

When the production manager selects a sample of items that have been produced on her production line and computes the proportion of those items that are defective,the proportion is referred to as a statistic.

One of the reasons that managers prefer statistical sampling to nonstatistical sampling is that statistical sampling is generally easier to perform and less expensive.

Recently,an analyst in a company's marketing department surveyed customers regarding how often they buy a particular product.One customer indicated that she purchased the product 17 times in the last six months,but the analyst recorded the response as 71 times.This is an example of observer bias.

A company that is interested in determining which of three prices to charge for its products has test marketed the product in three cities,each time using a different price for the product.The number of products sold in the first week is recorded.In this case,the data are considered to have been collected using an experiment.

A tire manufacturing company is interested in obtaining data on stopping distances for each of the three main tread types made by the company.The data collection method that would be most likely used in this case would be:

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?

Another term used for statistical sampling is:

A political poll that is used to indicate the percentage of voters who will vote for a particular candidate makes use of which of the following?

One of the advantages of data check sheets is that as the data are being recorded,they are also being displayed in a useful format.

At the end of the school term,students are asked to rate the course and instructor by indicating on a scale of 1-5 how well they liked the course.The data generated from this question are examples of ordinal data.

A pharmaceutical company conducts a study where 50 patients are given a drug.They find that 10 percent of patients experience nausea as a side effect.This 10 percent is an example of a parameter.

The sales data for a company measured weekly for the past year would be considered cross-sectional data since the sales values are computed from the entire company.

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.