Section 1.1
Discrimination in the Workplace:
Data Exploration

Exploration: Informal, open-ended examination of the data.
 What does “open-ended” mean?
 You are uncovering and summarizing patterns.

Inference: Follows strict rules and focuses on judging whether
the patterns you found are what you would expect.
 You use this inference to make a specific decision
about your exploration.
 We will use this in section 1.2

Get familiar with the ideas of statistical thinking, without
worrying about the details of calculations.

Avoid getting caught by the trap of doing and not
understanding what you did or why.

Focus on the why and let the how come through practice.

Methods of stats can’t overtake the meaning.
Cases: The subjects or objects of the study.
 Variables: The characteristics of the cases that are being
studied.


Variability: It is what statistics is all about.
 Characteristics of cases differ. We are exploring and making
inferences about the variability.
 It makes our world inexact to our understanding, but non-the-
less interesting.
 Stats could be defined as the science of learning from data in
the presence of variability

Refer to page 4 and 5 in text book.

Distribution: What the values of the characteristic
measurements are and how often each occurs.
 This distribution is often shown with graphs or
plots. The dot plot is the first we will discuss.
 Example: # of siblings of students

Dot Plot: A number line that shows the spread of
the data with dots above the numbers where the
data lies. More dots mean more data points at that
value.

Refer to Westvaco spreadsheet… (p. 5 and 6)
 Let’s look at “Age” of salaried retained workers
(labeled “0”)
 Compare that to age of salaried laid off workers
(labeled “1,2,3,4,5”)

Is there a pattern or difference that you can
see from a dot plot?

2 Way Table: Shows details of data in rows and
columns. Cases are in rows and characteristics are
in columns.

This can be used to show similarities or differences
in quantities and proportions. See page 6.
Laid off
Retained
Total
Under 50
6
10
16
50 or Older
12
8
20
Total
18
18
36


Compare text book display 1.3 – Salaried
workers to display 1.5 – Hourly workers.
Which gives stronger evidence in support of a
claim for age discrimination?
Why?

If time permits:

Page 9
Practice #s: 1, 2, 3



Page 9:
Exercises 1, 2, 3, 5, 7