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Hint: Make sure to discuss study’s goal, subjects, and variables in the data. The ECLS was measuring academic progress of over 20,000 kids from kindergarten to 5th grade. The reading says that subjects were chosen from across the country to get an accurate measurement of American Students. The parents were also interviewed and asked about their parenting techniques from discipline to how much TV the kids could watch. ## Q2 Describe regression analysis in your own words. Hint: A correct answer must have a discussion on a main concept of regression, often called as, “all else being equal”, “controlling for other variables”, or “Ceteris paribus”. The author explained this concept using “the circuit board analogy”. Regression analysis allows economists to look through tons of data and lets them select two variables while holding all others constant to how if there is any correlation between the two data points. As stated in the reading “Regression analysis is the tool that enables an economist to sort out these huge piles of data. It does so by artificially holding constant every variable except the two he wishes to focus on, and then showing how those two co-vary.” Regression analysis allows the user to focus on just two variables rather than trying to sort through all the variables all at once. ## Q3 What is a drawback of regression analysis. What type of questions can regression analysis not answer? Hint: A correct answer must have a discussion on causality versus correlation. Regression analysis is unable to answer straight up questions but more so demonstrates correlation but not causation. As stated in the article “A regression alone can’t tell you whether it snows because it’s cold, whether it’s cold because it snows, or if the two just happen to go together.” Therefore it can tell you that X and Y happen together but can’t prove that X happens because of Y, or vice versa. ## Q4 What role does the quality of schools play in academic performance of students. Hint: See page 150. The quality of the school places a massive role in the sucess of the students. As stated in the article schools with a higher percentage of black students were not conducive to learning due to there being more trouble makers and gangs within the school. Just because the class size, teachers experience, and other factors that were consistent with the better schools doesn’t mean anything if the environment to learn in isn’t ideal. ## Q5 Continued from Q4. How could you control for the quality of schools in the study? Hint: For this question, you may need additional information in addition to the assigned reading. You may Google search someting like “how does regression control for variables”. To control the variable of quality of school you could only test rural, suburban, and urban against each other. This is because stated in the article rural schools tested worse than average, while suburban schools where the middle of the bell curve and finally urban schools scoring the highest out of the three. Testing those types of schools against other schools like themselves would help you visualize how well they match up against each other and how the quality of the school changes scores based of those specific areas. ## Q6 The author says that regression is more art than science. What does he mean? The author compares regression to parenting itself, because with parenting the decisions made are based off of what the parents believe is the right thing to do, and what is the right way to raise their kid. With regression it is the same, he calls it an art because it depends on how each person perceives the data and what their educated opinion is based on what that data means. Just like art, regression is very much up to interpretation rather than having specific answers to questions. ## Q7 What are major takeaways from the reading? The major takeaways I had from this reading were how regression works, and that it doesn’t always give you a definitive answer but allows you to visualize the data in a way you are able to make a educated opinion. I also took away that when reading the data just because variables X and Y happen together doesn’t mean one is the causation of the other. ## Q8 Hide the messages, but display the code and its results on the webpage. ## Q8 Hide the messages, but display the code and its results on the webpage. Hint: Use message, echo and results in the chunk options. Refer to the RMarkdown Reference Guide.