I think I could not blame students for floundering about on this one. On Thu, 29 Nov 2001 14:39:35 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Stan Brown) wrote:
> On a quiz, I set the following problem to my statistics class: > > "The manufacturer of a patent medicine claims that it is 90% > effective(*) in relieving an allergy for a period of 8 hours. In a > sample of 200 people who had the allergy, the medicine provided > relief for 170 people. Determine whether the manufacturer's claim > was legitimate, to the 0.01 significance level." > > (The problem was adapted from Spiegel and Stevens, /Schaum's > Outline: Statistics/, problem 10.6.) [ snip, rest ] "Determine whether the manufacturer's claim was legitimate, to the 0.01 significance level." I have never asked that as a question in statistics, and it does not have an automatic, idiomatic translation to what I ask. I can expect that it means, "Use a 1% test." But, for what? After I notice that the outcome was poorer than the claim, then I wonder if the test is, "Are these data consistent with the Claim? or do they tend to disprove it?" That seems some distance from the tougher, philosophical question of whether, at the time it was made, the claim was legitimate. That claim could NEVER, legitimately, have been *based* on these data. That is an idea that tries to intrude itself, to me, and makes it difficult to address the intended question. - By the way, it also bothers me that "90% effective" is apparently translated as "effective for 90% of the people." I wondered if the asterisk was supposed to represent "[sic]". -- Rich Ulrich, [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
