Assignment 10

Discussion

1. Grab a partner, and one handful of beans per partnership. Count the beans. Based on your count, do you think there are more white beans or black beans? How sure are you of your answer? How could you increase your certainty about the answer?
2. Suppose this were a poll for a newspaper. Decide what you will claim the margin of error of your poll is, and write a sentence or two to explain to your readers what you mean when you say that this is the margin of error.
3. Does it matter if the black beans are slightly larger (on average) than the white beans?

Homework assignments for Thursday, October 27

Read Chapter 19 in FPPA and do review exercises on page 323 problems # 1, 3, 4, 5

Journal Assignment for Thursday, October 27

1. According to the recently unveiled study of ``social and behaviorial aspects of fertility-related behavior" among Americans aged 18 to 65, 2.8% of men and 1.4% of women identify themselves as ``gay". More than 80 percent of married women and 65 percent to 85 percent of married men (depending on age) said they'd never been unfaithful to their spouse. From what you have learned about the methodology of the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, what might lead you to question some of the survey's findings? How how much trust would you place in the two results we have mentioned from the survey?

Projects

Hand in next Tuesday (November 1) a brief description of the project that you propose to do for the course. You can find project suggestions on Mosaic. (Click on ``Chance at Dartmouth, 1994 Fall".) Suggestions can also be found from ``Chance Magazine" that we have put on reserve in Kresge Library. You can also find ideas from recent issues of ``Chance News". You can search on these for articles on a given topic.