A Power Play
A one act scene with two characters
Statistician: Hi, what can I do for you today?
Client: I’m planning a study on whether college students are worse drivers than the regular population.
Statistician: Ok, how do you plan on picking people for the study?
Client: We’re just going to survey the first people we see at Walmart.
Statistician: Huh… let’s talk about that later. What do you plan on asking them?
Client: Whether they are a student, and how much money they paid in traffic fines last year.
Statistician: I see, well that’s not going to be normal.
Client: Oh you’re telling me. My advisor does even more weird stuff. Once in a public restroom…
Statistician: No, I mean the distribution won’t be normal. You should have a lot of zeros.
Client: Oh yeah, but we’ll average those out. I just need to know how many people I need to survey.
Statistician: Well tell me what kind of results you’re trying to find.
Client: I knew you would ask that – I need 95% confidence with 85% power. My advisor says so.
Statistician: Good, do you have an idea about the standard deviation?
Client: Huh?
Statistician: How much variability do you expect to get in the answers?
Client: I don’t know. If I knew that I wouldn’t need to come talk to you.
Statistician: Ok, well maybe after you have a little data we can look at it and talk again.
Client: I understand, but can you give me any sort of rough ball-park figure?
Statistician: Can you tell me what kinds of answers you expect to get?
Client: Yes, I have studied this a little. Out of a hundred people, half will say zero, then 20 will say less
than 100 bucks. Another 20 will say around 250 dollars. The last ten will be spread out as high as 600
dollars.
Statistician: And what if I told you that college students pay 50 cents more on average?
Client: Gosh, that’s not interesting. I’m hoping it’s a lot more than that.
Statistician: So if it was 100 dollars more?
Client: Even 20 dollars would be interesting. Then I could impress my advisor and graduate! But only if
you can give me some idea of how many people I need to survey so I can start planning!
…….
DQ4: Finish the play