Research Paper Example
What is the average number of words in a sentence from
your statistics book? You are to do a statistical analysis
and report your finding both numerically and in the form of
a short paper. Because there are a great many sentences in
the book, you probably will not want to take a census.
Therefore you may estimate the true mean by taking a
sample.
Your first challenge will be to design a sampling
procedure that will yield a random sample. Your procedure
should be one that gives every sentence in the book an equal
chance of being selected. You must describe this procedure
that you use in your written results. If the sample is not
taken correctly, then the results will mean nothing.
After you have taken a sample of 60 sentences, you will
use the computer to do your computation. You can have the
computer give you 90%, 95% and 99% confidence intervals for
the true mean number of words in a sentence in our text.
Explain what these results mean. You should turn in a typed
paper with computer output. Your paper should be about two
or three pages long.
You will quickly discover that the hard part of this
assignment is taking the sample. The rest should be fairly
easy, even the writing up of results.
If you have any questions, ask.
Variations of this assignment over the years included
estimating the average number of pages in library books, the
average age of library books, the average number of letters
of the words in the dictionary, the average number of
letters of last names of people in the telephone directory,
the average number of letters in last names of the students
at the college, the average number of words in the sentences
used in Time Magazine, and the average age of people
listed in Whos Who.
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