In: Statistics and Probability
a) In each of the following situations, indicate whether the
potential bias is a selection bias, a nonparticipation
bias, or a response bias. Explain how this is an example of the
particular type of bias in a
complete sentence.
In a college town, college students are hired to conduct door to
door interviews to determine whether
city residents think there should be a law forbidding loud music at
parties.
A magazine sends a survey to a random sample of its subscribers
asking them whether they would
like the frequency of publication reduced from biweekly to monthly
or would prefer that it would
remain the same.
A random sample of registered voters is contacted by phone and
asked whether or not they are going
to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
Summer.
b) Suppose a national polling agency conducted 1000 polls in a
year, using proper random sampling,
and reported a 98% confidence interval for each poll. About how
many of those confidence intervals would
we expect to NOT cover the true population value?
c) What is the main distinguishing feature between observational
studies and randomized experiments?
In other words, how can you tell whether something is a randomized
experiment or an observational
study?