Chapter 13

  1. The reason the author could not say that he proved that the busy road was the quickest is because statistics is about managing risk and more data would be needed in order to “prove” it.

  2. The small p-value (despite the trivial difference between travel times) could be due to the nature of p-values. P-values are for hypothesis testing and to narrow possibilities. P-values are not error rates.

  3. Statistics can also be used for the collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data.

Chapter 14

  1. We say the probability of the data under the null hypothesis because the null hypothesis is a statement that suggests no change between groups. This is so that during the test, if there is a change between groups, it can be attributed to what is being tested and not random chance.

2b. African American males and white males have equal chance of hailing a taxi in New York City.

2c. New York hospitals have average Cesarean section rates.

2e. Patients taking the new, less toxic types of chemotherapy have equal response rates as those on standard chemotherapy drugs.

Chapter 15

  1. A p-value of 0.049999 is not necessarily always significant and a p-value of 0.050001 is not necessarily always non-significant. The sample size can affect whether the p-value is significant or not.

  2. I beleive that the reason the author’s experiment with Michael Jordan resulted in a non-significant p-value because the sample size was not large enough.

  3. The connection between criminal trials and p-values is the incorrect interpretation of p-values can lead to Type 1 errors ( an innocent person being imprisoned) or Type 2 errors (a guilty person being released).