STAT10010: Tutorial 1. Week 4.

2012
1. Universities are sometimes ranked for prestige according to the amount of funding for research their academic staff are able to obtain. Explain why it would
not be fair to compare universities using the total number of Euros obtained
for each university. What measure(s) could be used instead?
2. The Irish Times/MRBI regularly run opinion polls in Ireland. Imagine they ran
a poll on the opinions of the current electorate on who will be the new President
of Ireland. Discuss who are the population of interest and who should be in
the sample.
3. Television program ratings are often reported. RTE ask viewers to call and
register their opinion about whether the soap opera Fair City should continue
to be aired. They inform viewers to call one number to register a yes vote
and a different number to register a no vote. Are the viewers who call a
representative sample of all viewers? Explain.
4. Suppose the administration in UCD want to gauge how students feel about
a policy banning smoking on campus. Since they cant ask all students (why
not?) they must rely on using a sample.
(a) Give an example of a sample they could choose which would not be representative of all students.
(b) Explain how you think they could get a representative sample.
5. Suppose a tobacco company is planning to run a telephone survey of attitudes
about the smoking ban which has been introduced in Ireland. In each of the
following phases of the survey, should the company disclose who is funding the
study? Explain your answers.
When respondents answer the phone, before they are interviewed.
When the survey results are reported in the news.
When the interviewers are trained and told how to conduct the interviews.
6. The warden in Mountjoy prison wants to determine whether inmates think
the guards treat them fairly. Explain how each of the following components
could be used to produce biased results and how they could be used to produce
unbiased results:
(a) The researchers who had contact with the participants.
(b) The exact nature of the measurements made and the questions asked.
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