library(openintro)
## Please visit openintro.org for free statistics materials
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## Attaching package: 'openintro'
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  1. Smoking habits of UK residents. (1.10, p. 20) A survey was conducted to study the smoking habits of UK residents. Below is a data matrix displaying a portion of the data collected in this survey. Note that “£” stands for British Pounds Sterling, “cig” stands for cigarettes, and “N/A” refers to a missing component of the data.

  1. What does each row of the data matrix represent?

    Each row shows the smoking habits of UK residents. Each row is also differentiated by age, sex, marital status, and grossIncome.

nrow(smoking)
## [1] 1691

  1. How many participants were included in the survey?

    There are 1691 participants.

  2. Indicate whether each variable in the study is numerical or categorical. If numerical, identify as continuous or discrete. If categorical, indicate if the variable is ordinal.

    numerical: age(continious), amtweekends(discrete), amtweekdays(discrete) categorical: sex(nominal),marital(nominal), smoke(nominal), grossIncome(ordinal)

  1. Cheaters, scope of inference. (1.14, p. 29) Exercise 1.5 introduces a study where researchers studying the relationship between honesty, age, and self-control conducted an experiment on 160 children between the ages of 5 and 15. The researchers asked each child to toss a fair coin in private and to record the outcome (white or black) on a paper sheet, and said they would only reward children who report white. Half the students were explicitly told not to cheat and the others were not given any explicit instructions. Differences were observed in the cheating rates in the instruction and no instruction groups, as well as some differences across children’s characteristics within each group.

  1. Identify the population of interest and the sample in this study.

    The population of interest is the 160 children who reported white. The sample in this study is the 160 children between age 5 to 15.

  2. Comment on whether or not the results of the study can be generalized to the population, and if the findings of the study can be used to establish causal relationships.

    Yes the result of this study can be generalized to the population because some participants will change the results just to get the reward. I don’t think the findings of this study could be applied to casual relationships because relationships are more complicated. There are more factors that are in play within relationships.

  1. Reading the paper. (1.28, p. 31) Below are excerpts from two articles published in the NY Times:
  1. An article titled Risks: Smokers Found More Prone to Dementia states the following:

“Researchers analyzed data from 23,123 health plan members who participated in a voluntary exam and health behavior survey from 1978 to 1985, when they were 50-60 years old. 23 years later, about 25% of the group had dementia, including 1,136 with Alzheimer’s disease and 416 with vascular dementia. After adjusting for other factors, the researchers concluded that pack-a- day smokers were 37% more likely than nonsmokers to develop dementia, and the risks went up with increased smoking; 44% for one to two packs a day; and twice the risk for more than two packs.”

Based on this study, can we conclude that smoking causes dementia later in life? Explain your reasoning.

Based on this study we can conclude that smoking causes dementia later in life. We see a direct correlation between increased chance of getting dementia with an increase consumption of cigarettes.

  1. Another article titled The School Bully Is Sleepy states the following:

“The University of Michigan study, collected survey data from parents on each child’s sleep habits and asked both parents and teachers to assess behavioral concerns. About a third of the students studied were identified by parents or teachers as having problems with disruptive behavior or bullying. The researchers found that children who had behavioral issues and those who were identified as bullies were twice as likely to have shown symptoms of sleep disorders.”

A friend of yours who read the article says, “The study shows that sleep disorders lead to bullying in school children.” Is this statement justified? If not, how best can you describe the conclusion that can be drawn from this study?

No because there are other factors that can cause kids to become bullies. These factors can be bad home environment or personality disorders, etc. I would say sleep disorders does play a part in kids which can lead to bullying in school.

  1. Exercise and mental health. (1.34, p. 35) A researcher is interested in the effects of exercise on mental health and he proposes the following study: Use stratified random sampling to ensure rep- resentative proportions of 18-30, 31-40 and 41-55 year olds from the population. Next, randomly assign half the subjects from each age group to exercise twice a week, and instruct the rest not to exercise. Conduct a mental health exam at the beginning and at the end of the study, and compare the results.
  1. What type of study is this?

This study is experimental type where the control group gets the treatment(exercise twice a week)

  1. What are the treatment and control groups in this study?

Treatment group is the randomly selected people from 18-30, 31-40 and 41-55 year olds from the population who exercise twice a week. Control group is the rest of the population.

  1. Does this study make use of blocking? If so, what is the blocking variable?

Yes. The blocking variable is the age.

  1. Does this study make use of blinding?

Patient blinding, where the patient is unaware of whether they are in the treatment or control group. The participants are aware of that, treatment group gets to exercise vs. the control group doesn’t exercise.

  1. Comment on whether or not the results of the study can be used to establish a causal rela- tionship between exercise and mental health, and indicate whether or not the conclusions can be generalized to the population at large.

Yes the results of this study can be used to establish a causal relationship between exercise and mental health. FOr example, exercise can be used as stress reliever for some people which in the long term can help people better mentally. If the sample size is big enough we can generalize to the population at large. We also have to include more age ranges to realistically depict the general population, eg. 0-18 year olds and 55 and older.

  1. Suppose you are given the task of determining if this proposed study should get funding. Would you have any reservations about the study proposal?

Yes I would have some reservations about the study proposals. I will like to know what type of exercises the treatment group would be doing because there is a wide range of exercises(walking to running to heavy weightlifting, etc). Different types of exercises can affect each person differently, mentally and physically.