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
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