Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics

Case Studies

Any comments on existing materials or suggestions for new materials would be appreciated. If you have data that you think would make an interesting case study then please let us know.


E-mail comments and/or suggestions to lane@rice.edu.

Grant No. DUE-9751307



Visits since April 7, 1998

 

Smiles and Leniency
Will a smiling person accused of a crime be treated more leniently than one who is not smiling? If so, does the type of smile make a difference?

Concepts: quantile/boxplots, contrasts among means, Dunnet's test, Bonferroni correction


Weapons and Aggression
Does the mere presence of a weapon increase the accessibility of aggressive thoughts?

Concepts: quantile and box plots, stem and leaf displays, one-sample t test, confidence interval, within-subjects ANOVA, consequences of violation of normality assumption


Magnets and Pain Relief
Can the application of magnetic fields be an effective treatment for pain?

Concepts: boxplots, stem and leaf displays, correlated t test, two-sample t test, repeated measuresanalysis of variance, analysis of covariance


Instructor Reputation and Teacher Ratings
Does an instructor's reputation affect ratings of the instructor's lecture?

Concepts: boxplots, stem and leaf displays, two-sample t tests, analysis of variance


Diet and Health
A low-fat diet was compared to a "Mediterranean diet." See which led to to better health.

Concepts: Chi Square test of independence

Physical Strength and Job Performance
How does one select employees to perform physically demanding jobs? This case study examines the relationship between isometric strength tests and job performance for 147 workers.

Concepts: correlation, linear regression, multiple regression


Who is Buying iMacs?
What proportion of the iMac purchasers are new computer owners?

Concepts: confidence intervals, proportion, normal approximation to binomial