Question

This week you will explore descriptive statistics. You may not have noticed how often you

are presented with statistics in the media and in everyday conversations. It is common for people to make

statements like “Statistics show that… [insert claim].”

You are surrounded by statistics every day. You see them on news shows, hear them on the radio, read about them in magazines, newspaper and the internet.

Tell about two that you have seen recently. Write if you think if the statistic was based on a biased or unbiased sample.

A sample is biased if it systematically favors some outcome over others.

Example: A toothpaste advertisement states that 3 or 4 people prefer their product. This could be a biased survey, one that is not based on a random sample. They could have asked exactly 4 people about their product.

An unbiased sample accurately represents the population. Each member of the population is equally to be chosen

A person wants to find out how many people prefer chocolate of vanilla ice cream. To get an unbiased sample, she would pick out a few of the ice cream shops in her town and survey people leaving the establishment.

Answer 1

Problem statement:- We have to provide two cases where we observed use of statistics and identify whether it originated from an unbiased or biased sample.

Given:- It is an open ended question. Based on the question, the requirement is , we should be able to identify , appreciate the use of statistics in daily life and try to identify whether it origniates from an unbiased sample or a biased sample.

Solution:- Since, it is an open ended question, we proceed to highlight three cases (asked two in question but providing three here) where statisitcs was used and try to fid the type of sample, whether biased or unbiased.

Case (1):- Recent reports in a newspaper stated that the average height of Indian men is 5 feet and 6 inches. The data was collected and analyzed  by a goverment agency. Data was collected from all states of India and belonged to the age group of 20 to 50. This is an unbiased sample because, all men falling in the defined age groups acoss all the stated of India have equal probaility of getting selected.

Case (2):- A recent tourism report from Spain stated, in a given year 80% of the tourists to Ibiza are from England. This statisitc originates from an unbiased sample. This is because the Spain tourism ministry would have entire records of the forigeners visiting Ibiza and among those , it highlights that 80 % of them were from England.

Case (3):- An advertisement showcasing that, the health drink being endorsed boosts "2 times" the height growth among kids who consume it compared to the kids who dont consume any health drink. This study was conducted on a group of 60 kids of age 3. 30 kids were given health drink for 3 months while 30 kids were not given any health drink. Results were studied and concluded that the drink aids 2 times height growth compared to not consuming any health drink. This suggests that the results was obtained from a biased sample. An explaination to conclude that is a biased sample is height growth depends on a lot of varied factors other that health drink like genetic factors and also a grup of just 60 kids would not represent the entire (population) of kids of agre group 3.