JULY 16, 2012

It was Monday morning of the 16th day of July,that we III- Gold students passed an assignment about the Confidence Intervals when the standard deviation is unknown or n< 30.

We answered approximately 9 items that includes some difficult items that some of us were not able to finish it before the weekend ended. So to be able to pass it with complete answers some of our classmates went to school early and copy the assignments of others but some with genius minds didn't do it and went to the classroom of Ms. Macatigos right after the morning assembly.

Minutes after, our other classmates followed and entered the room. We checked our assignments and got high scores with no feeling of being surprised.

After checking our assignments, our teacher gave a quiz about the previous lesson because according to her there was enough time to do it and so there was no reason that we will take the quiz at some other time. The quiz    was just a two item test and we finished it on time. We were surprised to take the quiz but we answered it without difficulty.

tip:
ALWAYS REMEMBER the ROUNDING RULE or else you will get no points for "efforts" in solving for the answer.


Statistics trivia ;

The simplified statistical definition of median means the number in the middle when all the numbers in the series have been lined up. For example if I have 5 numbers 900, 700, 500 25, and 12 the middle number aka the median number is 500. It gives you no idea what the other numbers are which means it could be any random number close to the median or way above or below the median. So if an article, the median family income is $150,000 then that means 50% of the people surveyed make more, this and 50% make less than this. It also means that $150,000 was the number in the middle of all those surveyed. So if they surveyed 99 people the 50^th value when all the values were lined up in numerical order is $150,000. So theoretically the 49 values below could go from $0 to $149,999 and the 49 numbers above could reach an infinite value.

An average (statisticians use the term mean) is another way data reporting can be skewed depending on who is surveyed. An average is derived by taken all the numbers from those in the survey adding them together and dividing by the amount surveyed. So if you have 100 respondents you take their answers add them together and then divide by 100. The problem with this is the same problem that can be incurred when grading a test on curve with a genius in the class. One really high or low number can either increase or decrease the average dramatically.

There is a statistical trick in looking at the information published in newspapers, news reports and government documents. The trick is to figure out who they surveyed. You need to know what the numbers below and above the median and when looking at averages you need to know what the highest and lowest numbers were.

So when reading articles, listening to politicians and watching the news you may not want to put much weight on those numbers that they quote since they can include and exclude numbers to get the results that they want. 

BY: CARL JOEL E. PALMA