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Welcome to AP Statistics! Sit in any seat – near the front. How many licks does it take?. Find the people who chose the same color tootsie pop. Count the number of licks to get to the tootsie pop. Display your data. What’s in a name!. http://www.babynamewizard.com/.
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How many licks does it take? • Find the people who chose the same color tootsie pop. • Count the number of licks to get to the tootsie pop. • Display your data
What’s in a name! • http://www.babynamewizard.com/
Statistics can help answer questions such as….. • How well do SAT scores predict college success? • Should arthritis sufferers take Celebrex to ease their pain, or are the risks too great? • Do cell phones cause brain cancer?
What’s statistics? • Science of learning from data – numbers with context. • Science of collecting , organizing, analyzing, and drawing conclusions. • Used to make sense out of data.
Statistics is the Science of Learning from Data….. • The number 10.5 has no meaning by itself • but if I tell you it represents a newborn’s weight… • Data from polls, t.v. ratings, gas prices, medical study outcomes, etc. • Data is represented as numbers in context.
Get past anecdotal ideas…. • Unusual incidents stick in our minds. • Aug, 2000, Dr. Chris Newman appeared as a guest on CNN’s Larry King Live. He claimed that his brain cancer was a result of using cell phones. • Over 400,000 in Denmark studied and found no difference between users & non-users.
Data are more reliable than personal experiences because they systematically describe an overall picture rather than focus on a few incidents.!
Data Source…it matters • Ann Landers – “If you had it to do over again, would you have children.” • Few weeks later the headline was, “70% of parents say kids not worth it”
Do you believe this? • Who do you think wrote in and responded? • In a good study representative of all parents they found that 90% would do it all over!
Who talks more…women or men? • The author of The Female Brain said that women say 3 times as many words per day as men. • Researchers found that “Men showed a slightly wider variability in words uttered…But, in the end, the sexes came out just about even in the daily averages: women at 16,215 words and men at 15,669 when 396 students were tested.
The most important information about any statistical study is how the data were produced.
Statistics (and numbers in general) can be manufactured to make any idea sound convincing. When used properly, statistics is a powerful tool for uncovering truth; when used improperly, it can be manipulated to prove almost anything. • ~ "Hands-On Astrophysics" web site
How many times have you cheated during a test at school in the past year? • They asked 30,000 students from 100 randomly selected schools. • 64% had cheated at least once • Would we get exactly 64% if we asked this at Hanna?
Variability • It’s almost universal • Makes life interesting • Needs to be understood in order to make conclusions from data
Because variation is everywhere, conclusions are uncertain. Statistics gives us a language for talking about uncertainty that is understood by statistically literate people everywhere!
Where do we get good data? • Not from personal experience – example – we think planes are unsafe. • Library • Internet such as www.cdc.gov/nchs • Birth Data: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss.htm
Why Study Statistics? • To be an informed consumer • To make decisions • To test the qualities of products • To evaluate decisions that affect your life – insurance, financial aid, medical resources.
My cousin had a heart condition. She went to a hospital in her hometown that was ranked as one of the top ten in the nation for cardiac care. They turned her down because she was considered “too high risk.”Why?
Homework • Survey
