Course goals:
- To help you become an educated consumer of data and statistical claims.
- To introduce you to the practice of doing statistics. Along the way, I hope you will see the many and varied applications of statistics in medicine, business, psychology, environmental science, and other important fields. You must learn to communicate your thinking effectively and efficiently. I’ll provide the practice.
- To prepare you to take the AP Statistics exam in May. Note: All students are expected to take the AP test in Statistics, a three-hour test given in May. Those who opt not to take the test will be given a two-hour equivalent test in class.
The following activity will give you an idea of how we will be using statistics and simulation to understand 'chance.'
An Opening Activity Hiring discrimination—it just won’t fly!
An airline has just finished training 25 pilots—15 male and 10 female—to become captains. Unfortunately, only eight captain positions are available right now. Airline managers announce that they will use a lottery to determine which pilots will fill the available positions. The names of all 25 pilots will be written on identical slips of paper, placed in a hat, mixed thoroughly, and drawn out one at a time until all eight captains have been identified. A day later, managers announce the results of the lottery. Of the 8 captains chosen, 5 are female and 3 are male. Some of the male pilots who weren’t selected suspect that the lottery was not carried out
fairly. One of these pilots asks your statistics class for advice about whether to file a grievance with the pilots’ union. The key question in this possible discrimination case seems to be: could these results have happened just by chance? To find out, you and your classmates will simulate the lottery process that airline managers said they used.
After simulating the above situation, click here. We will create a plot of our class data. Please leave a comment below discussing what you have learned.
