Cases

The dataset contains 1309 passengers that were on the RMS Titanic. It contains information about each passenger and a variable for whether the person survived or not.

Data collection

From the documentation accompanying our data set on http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu:

“The principal source for data about Titanic passengers is the Encyclopedia Titanica.”

“One of the original sources is Eaton & Haas (1994) Titanic: Triumph and Tragedy, Patrick Stephens Ltd, which includes a passenger list created by many researchers and edited by Michael A. Findlay.”

“Thomas Cason of UVa has greatly updated and improved the titanic data frame using the Encyclopedia Titanica and created a new dataset called titanic3.”

“These datasets reflects the state of data available as of 2 August 1999.”

Type of study

The study is observational, from an actual event. Sampling techniques will be necessary because ages are not available for many of the passengers.

Data Source

The data set comes from http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu. Data has been collected by researchers and authors over the years. As it’s a famous incident, many have collected information in the time since the ship sunk.

Response

The response variable, survived, indicates whether the passenger survived, a categorical variable. Since it is not numeric, a logistic regression will be required.

Explanatory

Explanatory variables include age, a numeric variable, and passenger class, an ordinal categorical variable.

Relevant summary statistics

##   pclass survived    sex   age sibsp parch ticket     fare   cabin embarked boat body                       home.dest
## 1      1        1 female 29.00     0     0  24160 211.3375      B5        S    2   NA                    St Louis, MO
## 2      1        1   male  0.92     1     2 113781 151.5500 C22 C26        S   11   NA Montreal, PQ / Chesterville, ON

The mean age of passengers was 29.8811377.
The standard deviation of the age was 14.4134932.
The number of passengers who died was 809.
The number of passengers who lived was 500.
The number of passengers who were in first class was 323.
The number of passengers who were in second class was 277.
The number of passengers who were in third class was 709.
The mean age of the survivors was 28.9182436.
The mean age of the dead was 30.5453635.
The mean age of the first class passengers was 39.1599296.
The mean age of the second class passengers was 29.506705.
The mean age of the third class passengers was 24.8163673.

.
passenger.class gender number.survived number.died
first class female 139 5
second class female 94 12
third class female 106 110
first class male 61 118
second class male 25 146
third class male 75 418