MECU 6551

Assignment #1
Due: Monday, January 28th, 2013 at the beginning of class.

1. A farmer wishes to determine whether a protein additive in his cattle feed (Brand A)
is effective in increasing the weights of his cattle. He will compare three diets (Bran
A without the protein additive, Brand A mixed with a 10% solution of the protein
additive, Brand A mixed with a 20% solution of the protein additive). Suppose that he
has 30 cattle which are similar with respect to weight and age available for the
experiment, and can run the experiment for two weeks.

a) What are the experimental units, the factor and factor levels in this problem?

b) Which treatment in this experiment is the control treatment?

c) The farmer will weigh the cattle at the beginning and at the end of the experiment
and note the weight gains. Use a diagram to outline a completely randomized
design for this experiment.

2. You are planning to conduct a telephone survey, but you recognize that there are a
number of drawbacks to this method. Two of these drawbacks are: (i) individuals who
do not have phones will be excluded from the survey and (ii) individuals may not be
at home when you call them. What do we call these drawbacks?

3. A researcher is planning to conduct an experiment to compare 4 weight-loss

programs. She plans to use a block design utilizing 20 overweight women. Describe
how you would construct this experiment.

4. A researcher wishes to know whether taking Vitamin D will lower the risk of
osteoporosis in post-menopausal women. Describe a research method that would
provide a convincing answer to this question.

5. A call-in poll conducted by USA Today concluded that Americans love Donald
Trump. USA Today later reported that 5640 of the 7800 calls for the poll came from
the offices owned by one man, Cincinnati financier Carl Lindner, who is a friend of
Donald Trump. Do the results of this poll contain bias? Briefly explain your answer.

6. A bank wanted to test the sensitivity of the market to two factors regarding credit
cards: annual fees charged and annual interest rate charged. Not wanting to scrimp on
sample size, the bank obtained a mailing list with 100,000 names on it. They selected
50,000 names from the list, at random, and sent each of these individuals an offer for
a credit card with a low interest rate and no annual fee. The remaining 50,000
individuals were sent an offer for a credit card with a higher interest rate and a $50
annual fee. It turned out that more than twice as many people signed up for the low
interest, no-fee card. From this, the obvious conclusion was that people prefer a low
interest, no-fee card over a high interest card with an annual fee. Unfortunately, the
results of this experiment are not very useful, as such a conclusion could probably
 MECU 6551 Assignment #1 2013

have been drawn without going through all of the time and effort that was spent here.
The real interesting question might have been: do people prefer “no fees” or “low
interest”? The answer to that question cannot be found here because of the poorly
planned experiment. Is this an example of: response bias, nonresponse bias,
confounding, sampling error or all of these? Briefly explain your response.

7. An opinion poll calls 2,000 residential telephone numbers randomly chosen from the
telephone book and asks to speak with an adult member of the household. The
interviewer asks, “How many movies has your household watched in the movie
theatre in the past month?” Identify the population, sample, sample design and
whether or not bias is likely to be present and describe the type of bias you suspect.

8. Use the Internet or some printed material to find an example of a sample survey that
interests you. Describe the population, how the sample was collected, and some of the
conclusions. Also state the potential sources of bias for this sample. Provide a
reference including the date retrieved.

9. There are two forms of sampling other than multi-stage sampling and stratified
sampling, known as cluster sampling and systematic sampling. Explore the internet
for a good description of both. Briefly describe each of these techniques and the
primary motivation for using them instead of the other sampling techniques. Provide a
reference including the date retrieved.