Exam 1: What Is Statistics

A university wishes to conduct a student survey. In one of the questions students are asked to mark their gender as either male or female. Gender is an example of the:

A sample is a portion or part of the population of interest.

What level of measurement is a person's "favorite sport"?

Data measured on a nominal scale can only be classified into categories.

If we select 100 persons from 25,000 registered voters and question them about candidates and issues, the 100 persons are referred to as the population.

What level of measurement is the Centigrade temperature scale?

A company was studying the demographics of their customers. As part of the study, they collected the following variables: gender, marital status, credit rating (low, medium, high), annual income, and age. Label each variable as qualitative or quantitative, discrete or continuous, and nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio.

Categorizing voters as Democrats, Republicans, and Independents is an example of interval level measurement.

A bank asks customers to evaluate the drive-thru service as good, average, or poor. Which level of measurement is this classification?

The ordinal level of measurement is considered the "lowest" level of measurement.

The reported unemployment is 5.5% of the population. What measurement scale is used to measure unemployment?

The order that runners finish in a race would be an example of continuous data.

The performance of personal and business investments is measured as a percentage, "return on investment." What type of variable is "return on investment"?

Statistics are used as a basis for making decisions.

The names of the positions in a corporation, such as chief operating officer or controller, are examples of what type of variable?

When TV advertisements report "2 out of 3 dentists surveyed indicated they would recommend Brand X toothpaste to their patients," an informed consumer may question the conclusion because the:

The "lowest" level of measurement is ___________.

Which one of the following is NOT an example of discrete data?

A marketing research agency was hired to test a new DVD player. Consumers rated it outstanding, very good, fair, or poor. The level of measurement for this experiment is ordinal.

The terms descriptive statistics and inferential statistics can be used interchangeably.