Statistics & Probability

4a.
Concrete Population
Toyotas Driven in Florida
Refrigerators in Winter Park
Light bulbs in use in NYC
Hypothetical Population
number of dice throws
walks to school( I drive or ride my bike)
tossing a coin an infnite number of times
4b.
Would I be better of buying a Toyota or a Honda?(inferential)
What percentage of cars on the road in Florida are Toyotas?(probability)
What size refrigerator is most common in winter park?( probability )
Would we beneft from having less of them in winter park(inferential)?
What are the most common type of light bulbs used in NYC?(probability)
What is the impact of there types of light bulbs on the city?(inferential)
What are the odds we roll a six?(probability)
Would it be best to bet on rolling a 3 or a 4 for my next turn?(inferential)
What is the probability of me being hit by a car if I walk to school?(probability)
What is the impact of me walking to school on the USAs CO2 emissions. What about if the entire
campus did this?(inferential)
What are the odds of heads on a coin toss?(probability)
5a. The scores from the SI Group are from an existing population, that is the students enrolled in the class
to begin with, that is where they were picked from after all.
5b. The advantage of randomly selecting the samples for SI and non-SI groups is that no ones personal
bias goes into the deciding of which group to be in. For example, it is not hard to speculate that someone
who makes better grades and puts more efort into their school work would be more prone to join the
group that is signed up for the SI lectures to begin with, alternately it is not hard to imagine that a student
that doesnt care much about their grades would be less likely than the fore mentioned student.
5c. If all the students were in the treatment group there would be no evidence to support if the SI program
was benefcial or if it were not.
6. Based on the reading the two methods of creating sample populations are Simple Random
Selection(SRS) and Stratifed Sampling. If we were to choose the SRS method we wouldnt have much
work to do up front however we always run the risk of over sampling a particular campus. On the other
hand we could the Stratifed Sampling method. To do this we make a set of subgroups, one from each of
the 23 campuses ( thus satisfying the non-overlapping property). We would then pick randomly from each
of these subgroups. From here there are many techniques that can be used to calculate the average
distance from the students household and the campus. One of which could be to compute the simple
average of the given values. At this point this seems to be the most reasonable approach to take. I would
conceder this to be an analytic study only because our population is not static,thus violating the fnite and
unchaining collection clause,for example a student may drop out at any time. However it is resembles a
enumerative study, in that it is identifable. One could also argue that it is a fnite group in some ways,
since the human population is fnite. It has an upper and lower limit but may experience fuctuation at any
given time.
Resources:
Supplemental Instruction: An Efective Component of Student Afairs Programming (J. of
College Student Devel., 199: !"!#$%