• Best of luck to the class of 2024 for their HSC exams. You got this!
    Let us know your thoughts on the HSC exams here
  • YOU can help the next generation of students in the community!
    Share your trial papers and notes on our Notes & Resources page
MedVision ad

Statistics Marathon & Questions (1 Viewer)

davidgoes4wce

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2014
Messages
1,877
Location
Sydney, New South Wales
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

Speaking of Statistics have any of you guys used R Programming and Statistical software? (for say work or university purposes)?


I want to be more proficient at this software and I enjoy using it in comparison to Excel, SPSS or Minitab for that matter as the speed is alot quicker.
 

Trebla

Administrator
Administrator
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
8,384
Gender
Male
HSC
2006
University Statistics Discussion Marathon

Yeah that's the easy part but what's the interpretation of the p value? That's the part which I need to understand. The two figures I posted (the one you helped me in and the second one now) have different null and alternative hypothesis tests.
The p-value is the probability of an observation occurring assuming the null hypothesis is actually true. If the p-value is very low then the observation you see is very unlikely if the null hypothesis is true. If you believe the observation you see is typical (has a higher probability of occurring) then it is likely that your assumption may not be right, hence the decision reject it.

Speaking of Statistics have any of you guys used R Programming and Statistical software? (for say work or university purposes)?


I want to be more proficient at this software and I enjoy using it in comparison to Excel, SPSS or Minitab for that matter as the speed is alot quicker.
I've used R once upon a time
 

davidgoes4wce

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2014
Messages
1,877
Location
Sydney, New South Wales
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

The p-value is the probability of an observation occurring assuming the null hypothesis is actually true. If the p-value is very low then the observation you see is very unlikely if the null hypothesis is true. If you believe the observation you see is typical (has a higher probability of occurring) then it is likely that your assumption may not be right, hence the decision reject it.


I've used R once upon a time
There seems to be alot of jobs out there for people who are skilled up in R and SPSS. It pays to focus on one or two specific areas.
 

davidgoes4wce

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2014
Messages
1,877
Location
Sydney, New South Wales
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

Topic of this question is Sum and Difference of independent normal variates



Is there a mistake in this question? I get the feeling that they have substituted the wrong value of 40 in , which should have been 20.


 

davidgoes4wce

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2014
Messages
1,877
Location
Sydney, New South Wales
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

I'll admit I got this question from a quiz and from my understanding reading a textbook (which shows Excel cell calculation) my interpretation of this calculation is it should be :

= T.DIST.RT((25.23-19)/14.03, 24)




 
Last edited:

davidgoes4wce

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2014
Messages
1,877
Location
Sydney, New South Wales
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

Me too I've been thinking about it for a few days......................im guessing it would be lower. I read somewhere if you increase the sample size the p-value decreases slightly.
 

nerdasdasd

Dont.msg.me.about.english
Joined
Jul 29, 2009
Messages
5,353
Location
A, A
Gender
Male
HSC
2012
Uni Grad
2017
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

Me too I've been thinking about it for a few days......................im guessing it would be lower. I read somewhere if you increase the sample size the p-value decreases slightly.
If the mean or SD didn't change, that means the Z score probably didn't change right ?

If that doesn't change, the p value doesn't change too .
 

davidgoes4wce

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2014
Messages
1,877
Location
Sydney, New South Wales
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

If the mean or SD didn't change, that means the Z score probably didn't change right ?

If that doesn't change, the p value doesn't change too .
OK I'll take your word for it. I'll look to read up on it a bit further as I have actually never thought it about it in too much detail.
 

seanieg89

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2006
Messages
2,662
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

My stats knowledge is minimal, but wouldn't it decrease?

I assume that whats going on is you have the hypothesis that the avg sleeping hours of a student are normally distributed with mean 8 and variance V. We are doing a one-tailed test with test statistic our sample mean.

If our p-value is 0.1 that means the observed sample mean m of our initial sample of 20 students is quite a bit less than 8. (So the probability of a randomly selected student from our population sleeping less than m hours on average is only 0.1).

But the distribution of sample means in samples of size n is given by N(8,V/n). So as n increases, the probability of the the test statistic being smaller than m decreases, i.e. the p-value decreases.


Is there some other choice of hypothesis/test statistic here? Without specifying such a choice, the one I have made above seems natural to me.
 

davidgoes4wce

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2014
Messages
1,877
Location
Sydney, New South Wales
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

My stats knowledge is minimal, but wouldn't it decrease?

I assume that whats going on is you have the hypothesis that the avg sleeping hours of a student are normally distributed with mean 8 and variance V. We are doing a one-tailed test with test statistic our sample mean.

If our p-value is 0.1 that means the observed sample mean m of our initial sample of 20 students is quite a bit less than 8. (So the probability of a randomly selected student from our population sleeping less than m hours on average is only 0.1).

But the distribution of sample means in samples of size n is given by N(8,V/n). So as n increases, the probability of the the test statistic being smaller than m decreases, i.e. the p-value decreases.


Is there some other choice of hypothesis/test statistic here? Without specifying such a choice, the one I have made above seems natural to me.
With these MCQ questions (they were given to UNSW business statistics students)

The section or topic of the quiz , the majority of the questions were based on the t-test.

 

davidgoes4wce

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2014
Messages
1,877
Location
Sydney, New South Wales
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

The more I think about it the more I think the P-Value actually decreases



Case 1:







Case 2:








So what I can interpret from this is it decreases.
 
Last edited:

davidgoes4wce

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2014
Messages
1,877
Location
Sydney, New South Wales
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

Also I will admit , I did not know how to calculate a P-Value manually up until last week. (having studied high school stats+ uni stats for around 6 years) If you guys are looking to get better at statistics with Excel highly recommend this book by : Mark Berenson, David Levine and Kathryn Szabat, BUSS1020 Quantitative Business Analysis.

I personally feel they explain stats better than the Science, Advanced Science, Engineering or Psychology way of statistics.
 
Last edited:

seanieg89

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2006
Messages
2,662
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

Sure, if you are using the t-test then use that formula instead, it will still decrease. You can compute the p-value in terms of n by using the t-distribution and show it decreases by using calculus or whatever else you like.

Just think about it intuitively, a sample of two students who on average undersleep by H hours is far less significant than a sample of 1,000,000 students who on average undersleep by the same amount. (With both samples having the same s.d.)

The latter is far greater evidence of a trend of undersleeping students, and any reasonable statistical test should reflect this.
 

davidgoes4wce

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2014
Messages
1,877
Location
Sydney, New South Wales
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Re: University Statistics Discussion Marathon

This is the theory behind the above question



It seems like in that 2nd line of working, they did an expansion, I for one could not see that expansion of








I got a bit lost with the 'n' chucked in the third term of the expansion as well.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top