Chapter 4 Practice Test Name:________________________________________

IMPORTANT: When you have completed your study guide, check your answers on Haiku in a
different colored writing utensil. You MUST do the Haiku check to get full credit. Give yourself a
check for a correct answer. Correct your mistakes for what you got wrong.

Section I: Multiple Choice

1. When we take a census, we attempt to collect data from

a) A stratified random sample.

b) Every individual chosen in a simple random sample.
c) Every individual in the population.
d) A voluntary response sample.
e) A Convenience sample.

2. A study of treatments for angina (pain due to low blood supply to the heart) compared bypass
surgery, angioplasty, and use of drugs. The study looked at the medical records of thousands of
angina patients whose doctors had chosen one of these treatments. It found that the average
survival time of patients given drugs was the highest. What do you conclude?

a) This study proves that drugs prolong life and should be the treatment of choice.
b) We can conclude that drugs prolong life because the study was a comparative experiment.
c) We can’t conclude that drugs prolong life because the patients were volunteers.
d) We can’t conclude that drugs prolong life because the groups might differ in ways besides
the treatment.
e) We can’t conclude that drugs prolong life because no placebo was used.

3. Ruby wanted to estimate the average among of time that students at her school spend on
Facebook each day. She gets an alphabetical roster of students in the school from the registrar’s
office and numbers the students from 1 to 1137. Then Ruby uses a random number generator to
pick 30 distinct labels from 1 to 1137. She surveys those 30 students about their Facebook use.
Ruby’s sample is a simple random sample because

a) It was selected using a chance process.

b) It gave every individual the same chance to be selected.
c) It gave every possible sample of size 30 an equal chance to be selected.
d) It doesn’t involve strata or clusters.
e) It is guaranteed to be representative of the population.
4. Consider an experiment to investigate the effectiveness of different insecticides in controlling
pests and their impact on the productivity of tomato plants. What is the best reason for randomly
assigning treatment levels (spraying or not spraying) to the experimental units (farms)?

a) Random assignment eliminates the effects of other variables, like soil fertility.
b) Random assignment eliminates chance variation in the responses.
c) Random assignment allows researchers to generalize conclusions about the effectiveness of
the insecticides to all farms.
d) Random assignment will tend to average out all other uncontrolled factors such as soil
fertility so that they are not confounded with the treatment effects.
e) Random assignment helps avoid bias due to the placebo effect.

5. Researchers randomly selected 1700 people from Canada who had never suffered a heart attack
and rated the happiness of each person. Ten years later, the researchers followed up with each
person and found that people who were initially rated as happy were less likely to have a heart
problem. Which of the following is the most appropriate conclusion based on this study?

a) Happiness causes better heart health for all people.

b) Happiness causes better heart health for Canadians.
c) Happiness causes better heart health for the 1700 people in the study.
d) Happier people in Canada are less likely to have heart problems.
e) Happier people in the study were less likely to have heart problems.

6. A TV station wishes to obtain information on the TV viewing habits in its market area. The
market area contains one city of population 170,00, another city of 70,000, and four towns of about
5000 residents each. The station suspects that the viewing habits may be different in larger and
smaller cities and in the rural areas. Which of the following sampling designs would yield the type
of information the station requires?

a) A stratified sample from the cities and towns in the market area
b) A cluster sampling using the cities and towns as clusters
c) A convenience sample from the market area
d) A simple random sample from the market area
e) An online poll that invites all people from the cities and towns in the market area to
participate

7. Bias in a sampling method is

a) Any difference between the sample result and the truth about the population.
b) The difference between the sample result and the truth about the population due to using
chance to select a sample.
c) Any difference between the sample result and the truth about the population due to
practical difficulties such as contacting the subjects selected.
d) Any difference between the sample result and the truth about the population that tends to
occur in the same direction whenever you use this sampling method.
e) Racism or sexism on the part of those who take the sample.
8. You wonder if TV ads are more effective when they are longer or repeated more often or both. So
you design an experiment. You prepare 30-second and 60-second ads for a camera. Your subjects
all watch the same TV program, but you assignment them at random to four groups. One group sees
the 30-second ad once during the program; another sees it three times; the third group sees the 60-
second ad once; and the last group sees the 60-second ad three times. You ask all subjects how
likely they are to buy the camera. Which of the following best describes the design of this
experiment?

a) This is a randomized block design, but not a matched pairs design.

b) This is a matched pairs design.
c) This is a completely randomized design with one explanatory variable (factor).
d) This is a completely randomized design with two explanatory variables (factors).
e) This is a completely randomized design with four explanatory variables (factors).

9. Can texting make you healthier? Researchers randomly assigned 700 Australian adults to either
receive usual health care or usual health care plus automated text messages with positive messages,
such as “Walking is cheap. It can be done almost anywhere. All you need is comfortable shoes and
clothing.” The group that received the test messages showed a statistically significant increase in
physical activity. What is the meaning of “statistically significant” in this context?

a) The results of this study are very important.

b) The results of this study should be generalized to all people.
c) The difference in physical activity for the two groups is greater than 0.
d) The difference in physical activity for the two groups is very large.
e) The difference in physical activity for the two groups is larger than the difference that could
be expected to happen by chance alone.

10. You want to know the opinions of American high school teachers on the issue of establishing a
national proficiency test as a prerequisite for graduation from high school. You obtain a list of all
high school teachers belonging to the National Education Association (the country’s largest
teachers’ union) and mail a survey to a random sample of 2500 teachers. In all, 1347 of the teachers
return the survey. Of those who responded, 32% say that they favor some kind of national
proficiency test. Which of the following statements about this situation is true?

a) Because random sampling was used, we can feel confident that the percent of all American
high school teachers who would say they favor a national proficiency test is close to 32%.
b) We cannot trust these results, because the survey was mailed. Only survey results from
face-to-face interviews are considered valid.
c) Because over half of those who were mailed the survey actually responded, we can feel
fairly confident that they actual percent of all American high school teachers who would say
they factor a national proficiency test is close to 32%.
d) The results of this survey may be affected by undercoverage and nonresponse.
e) The results of this survey cannot be trusted due to voluntary response bias.
Section II: Free Response
Show all your work. Indicate clearly the methods you use, because you will be graded on the
correctness of your methods as well as the accuracy and completeness of your results and
explanations.

11. Elephants sometimes damage trees in Africa. It turns out that elephants dislike bees. They
recognize beehives in areas where they are common and avoid them. Can this information be used
to keep elephants away from trees? Researchers want to design an experiment to answer these
questions using 72 acacia trees and three treatments: active hives, empty hives, and no hives.

a) Identify the experiment units in this experiment.

b) Explain why it is beneficial to include some trees that have no hives.

c) Describe how the researchers could carry out a completely randomized design for this
experiment. Include a description of how the treatments should be assigned.
12. Google and Gallup teamed up to survey a random sample of 1673 U.S. students in grades 7-12.
One of the questions was “How confident are you that you could learn computer science if you
wanted to?” Over all, 54% of students said they were very confident.

a) Identify the population and the sample.

b) Explain why it was better to randomly select the students rather than putting the survey
question on a website and inviting students to answer the question.

c) Do you expect that the percent of all U.S. students in grades 7-12 who would say “very confident”
is exactly 54%? Explain your answer.

d) The report also broke the results down by gender. For this question, 62% of males and 48% of
female said they were very confident. Which of the three estimates (54%, 62%, 48%) do you expect
is closest to the value it is trying to estimate? Explain your answer.
13. Many people start their day with a jolt of caffeine from coffee or a soft drink. Most experts agree
that people who consume large amounts of caffeine each day may suffer from physical withdrawal
symptoms if they stop ingesting their usual amounts of caffeine. Researchers recruited 11
volunteers who were caffeine dependent and who were willing to take part in a caffeine withdrawal
experiment. The experiment was conducted on two 2-day periods that occurred one week apart.
During one of the 2-day periods, each subject was given a capsule containing the amount of caffeine
normally ingested by that subject in one day. During the other study period, the subjects were given
placebos. The other in which each subject received the two types of capsules was randomized. The
subjects’ diets were restricted during each of the study periods. At the end of each 2-day study
period, subjects were evaluated using a tapping task in which they were instructed to press a
button 200 times as fast as they could.

a) Identify the explanatory and response variables in this experiment.

b) How was blocking used in the design of this experiment? What is the benefit of blocking in this
context?

c) Researchers randomized the order of the treatments to avoid confounding. Explain how
confounding might occur if the researchers gave all subjects the placebo first and caffeine second. In
this context, what problem does confounding cause?

d) Could this experiment have been carried out in a double-blind manner? Explain your answer.