INTRODUCTION TO STATISTICS
EXAM QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
"Lurking Variable - Correct Answer a variable that is not among the explanatory or response variables
in a study, but could substantially affect your interpretation of the relationship among those variables"
"Simpson's paradox - Correct Answer When a lurking variable causes you to rethink the direction of an
association"
"Probability distribution - Correct Answer a list of a variable's possible values and their corresponding
probabilities"
"Categorical variable - Correct Answer places individuals into one of several groups
Two types: nominal and ordinal"
"Quantitative Variable - Correct Answer represents a measurement or a count
Two types: Interval and ratio"
"Nominal Variable - Correct Answer categorical variables where there is no natural order among the
categories"
"Ordinal variable - Correct Answer categorical variables where there is natural order among the
categories"
"Interval Variable - Correct Answer a measurement or count for which it makes sense to talk about the
difference between values, but it does not make sense to talk about the ratio between values; 0 does
not represent the absence of quanitity"
"Ratio Variable - Correct Answer quantitative variables for which it makes sense to talk about the
difference between values AND the ratio between values; 0 represents the absence of quantity"
"What type of variable?:
eye color - Correct Answer nominal"
"What type of variable?:
socioeconomic status with categories low, med, high - Correct Answer Ordinal"
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, "Conditional probability
P(B | A) - Correct Answer the conditional probability of event B occurring given that event A has
occurred
P(B | A) = P(A and B) / P(A)."
"Standard deviation of all sample proportions - Correct Answer √{[p(1−p)]/n}."
"Standard deviation of all sample means - Correct Answer σ/(√n)"
"What type of variable?:
Temperature - Correct Answer Interval"
"What type of variable?:
Income - Correct Answer Ratio"
"Visual display and numerical summary for a single categorical variable - Correct Answer pie chart or
bar chart
and category percentages"
"Visual display and numerical summary for a single quantitative variable - Correct Answer histogram or
stemplot
and descriptive statistics"
"Visual display and numerical summary for C->C - Correct Answer Two way table and conditional
percentages"
"Visual display and numerical summary for C->Q - Correct Answer Side by side box plots and
descriptive statistics"
"Visual display and numerical summary for Q->Q - Correct Answer Scatterplot and correlation
coefficient (r)"
"Standard Deviation Rule - Correct Answer Approximately
68% of observations fall within 1 sd of the mean,
95% within 2 sd,
99.7% (or virtually all) within 3 sds"
"Interquartile Range (IQR) - Correct Answer Middle 50% of the data
IQR= Q3-Q1"
"Finding an outlier using IQR - Correct Answer An observation is considered a suspected outlier if it is:
less than Q1 - 1.5(IQR), or
more than Q3 + 1.5(IQR)."
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