QS104 - Introduction to Social

Analytics I: Worksheet Week 8

Dr Florian Reiche
Department of Politics and International Studies
University of Warwick
F.Reiche@warwick.ac.uk

Recap of the Lecture

In your own words:

1. What is a sample distribution?

2. How does the sample distribution differ from the sampling distribution?
3. Why do we need the sampling distribution?

How to read a z-table

In the lecture you have learned about the Normal Distribution. Under the Normal Distribution,
the area under the curve is determined by the number of standard deviations around our
mean µ. This number is expressed in the form of the z-score which is defined as:

Observation − Mean y−µ

z= = (1)
Standard Deviation σ

To put this in words, z takes the difference between a particular value we are interested in
and the mean. It then divides this distance by the standard deviation, in order to express
the distance in units of standard deviations. Why do we do this? We know that under the
Normal Distribution the area of the interval mean ± one standard deviation is equal to 68%.
 y −3 σ −2 σ −1 σ mean 1σ 2σ 3σ

Figure 1: Area under the Normal Distribution

This is equivalent to the blue area in Figure 1. This also means that the remaining white
area is equal to 32%, or the white section on each side 16%.

Imagine now, we took the point of minus one standard deviation as a starting point, and
turn right, as in Figure 2. The white area is still 16%, so that the blue area needs to be 84%.
y

−3 σ −2 σ −1 σ mean 1σ 2σ 3σ

Figure 2: Right-Tail Probability

So the probability of finding a value larger than what is equivalent to minus one standard
deviation is 84%. We call this a right-tail probability. The beauty is that we can do this for
any point on the x-axis. Once we know how many standard deviations a value is removed
from the mean, we can use the right-tail probability to assess how likely a value higher (or
lower) than this value is to occur.

The number of standard deviations is the z-score. Every z-score has a right-tail probability
associated with it. These probabilities are listed in Table 5 on the last page of this worksheet.
How do we read this Table? Let me take you through the example used in the lecture

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once more. We assumed that the voter turnout rates of the 2019 European Elections for
28 countries was normally distributed, with µ = 50.66 and σ = 16.56. You can see this
distribution visualised in Figure 3.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Figure 3: Voter Turnout in the 2017 European Elections (n=28)

The question then was how likely it was for the EU to achieve a voter turnout larger than
the voter turnout in the last General Election in the UK (68.8). If we wanted to visualise
this, we would need the area to the right of 68.8 on the x-axis. This would look like this:
y

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Figure 4: Probability of Voter Turnout > 68.8

In order to calculate the size of this area, we first took the difference between 68.8 and 50.66
which is 18.14. We then divided 18.14 by the standard deviation of 16.56, to express the
distance in units of the standard deviation. The result is 1.095411. We know, therefore, that
the point of 68.8 percent voter turnout on the x-axis is located 1.095411 standard deviations
to the right of the mean.

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We now need to find the right-tail probability that belongs to this value. In the left-most
column of Table 5 you find the z-values with the first decimal place. Move down to 1.1. From
here you turn right, until you hit the second decimal place. As our value is 1.10 you will only
have to go one column to the right. If the value was 1.11, you would have to go two columns
to the right. For a z-score of 1.1 the area is 0.1357, or 13.57%. We can therefore say that
with a voter turnout of 50.66 and a standard deviation of 16.56, the probability of achieving
a voter turnout higher than 68.6 is 13.57%.

Before moving on, I need to note that z can be negative. If we were assessing the probability
of achieving a voter turnout of less than 32.52% (50.66-18.14), we would get a z-score of
-1.5. Because the Normal Distribution is symmetrical, we can use the same process, but need
to reverse the logic. Because the right tail probability gives us the area to the right of the
z-score, a negative z-score would give us the area to the left of the z-score. So the probability
of a voter turnout smaller than 32.52 is also 13.57%.

With this knowledge at hand, let’s do some calculations.

Calculations1

1. The mean weight of a bag of apples is 1 kg. The weight of bags is normally distributed
around this mean with a standard deviation of 50g.
a. Billy is looking for the heaviest bag possible and finds one that is 1082 g. What is
the probability of finding a heavier bag?
b. What is the probability that Billy will find a bag lighter than 870g?
c. How would the results of a. and b. change if the standard deviation was only 40g?
Why?

1
These exercises are taken from Reiche, F. (forthcoming) Introduction to Quantitative Methods in the
Social Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Figure 5: Right-Tail Probabilities
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