Chapter1

Terminology and Collecting Data

Honors 281
Let’s set up a story
• Timmy wants to open a pizza store.

• What metrics should Timmy consider when collecting data for this
study?
Statistics in Timmy’s Journey
• What is the population of Timmy’s study?
• Sample?
• How was Timmy’s data collected?
• Was there any bias to Timmy’s selection?
Types of Studies
• Observational
• the person carrying out the study does not control who (or what) is in which
population
• Experimental
• the person carrying out the study does control who (or what) is in which
experimental group.
Planning Experiments
• Recall: The value of some response variable is measured under the
different experimental conditions that are sometimes called
treatments
• What do we need to consider?
5 W’s
• Who- This tells people who the information is about.  It can be one person, or more of a
group.
• What- The what shows what they are looking at, as well as what the information is about.
• When- When shows how recent and up to date the information is.  It is important
because a survey from the 1800's is going to display results a lot different from now.
• Where- Different parts of the world, or nation, are going to think and believe different
things about a topic, so the where gives people information on what the things involved
are like.
• Why- This is the reason why the statistics of a topic were calculated, and show people the
purpose of the information.
• How- A one-on-one survey might give different results than an anonymous one, so some
topics might require information on how the information was gathered.
Importance of
Randomness
• The myth: "A random sample will
be representative of the
population". 
• A slightly better explanation that
is partly true but partly urban
legend : "Random sampling
eliminates bias by giving all
individuals an equal chance to be
chosen.”
• The real reason: The mathematical
theorems which justify most
frequentist statistical procedures
apply only to random samples. 
Let’s Practice: As a team
• What kind of study do you want to conduct?
• Why do we care?
• What is our research question?
• What is our population? Sample?
• What metrics do we want to collect?
• How do you want to collect this data?
Report back
• Helpful feedback and criticism please from everyone.
Activity (By Friday)
• Find a dataset online or bring one from your other classes or field
• It must have at least 2 numeric (preferably continuous variables) and 1
categorical variable
• Do the 5 W’s for the data