Chapter 5 Practice Test

A chemical engineer is investigating how temperature and stirring rate affect the yield of a chemical reaction. The experiment will test combinations of 2 temperatures (50°C and 60°C) and 3 stirring rates (60 rpm, 90 rpm, 120 rpm) on batches of feedstock. 10 batches will be processed for each combination, for a total of 6 treatments.

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Chapter 5 Practice Test

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Jerome R. Biroo

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Chapter 5 Test MDM4U-P November 27, 2007

A chemical engineer is designing the production process for a new product. The
chemical reaction that produces the product may have a higher or lower yield depending
on the temperature and the stirring rate in the vessel in which the reaction takes place.
The engineer decides to investigate the effects of combinations of two temperatures
(50˚C and 60˚C) and three stirring rates (60 rpm, 90 rpm, and 120 rpm) on the yield of
the process. Ten batches of feedstock will be processed at each combination of
temperature and stirring rate.

1. What are the experimental units?

(a) The two temperatures (50˚C and 60˚C)
(b) The three stirring rates (60 rpm, 90 rpm, and 120 rpm)
(c) The two temperatures and the three stirring rates
(d) The batches of feedstock
(e) None of the above. The answer is __________________________.

2. Identify all factors (explanatory variables).

3. What is the response variable?

4. How many treatments are there?

(a) 2 (b) 3 (c) 5 (d) 6
(e) None of the above. The answer is __________________________.

5. How many experimental units are needed?

(a) 2 (b) 3 (c) 5 (d) 6
(e) None of the above. The answer is __________________________.
6. A member of Congress wants to know what his constituents think of proposed
legislation on health insurance. His staff reports that 228 letters have been received
on the subject, of which 193 oppose the legislation. What is the population in this
situation?
(a) The constituents
(b) The 228 letters received
(c) The 193 opposing the legislation
(d) Congress
(e) None of the above. The answer is _____________________________.

7. Control groups are used in experiments in order to . . .

(a) Control the effects of lurking variables such as the placebo effect
(b) Control the subjects of a study so as to insure all participate equally
(c) Guarantee that someone other than the investigators, who have a vested interest in
the outcome, control how the experiment is conducted
(d) Achieve a proper and uniform level of randomization
(e) None of the above. The answer is ______________________________.

8. Under which of the following conditions is it preferable to use stratified random

sampling rather than simple random sampling?
(a) The population can be divided into a large number of strata so that each
stratum contains only a few individuals.
(b) The population can be divided into a small number of strata so that each stratum
contains a large number of individuals.
(c) The populations can be divided into strata so that the individuals in each stratum
are as much alike as possible.
(d) The population can be divided into strata so that the individuals in each stratum
are as different as possible.
(e) The population can be divided into strata of equal sizes so that each individual in
the population still has the same chance of being selected.

9. Each person in a simple random sample of 2000 received a survey, and 317 people
returned the survey. How could nonresponse cause the results of the survey to be
biased?
(a) Those who did not respond reduced the sample size, and small samples have
more bias than large samples.
(b) Those who did not respond caused a violation of the assumption of independence.
(c) Those who did not respond were indistinguishable from those who did not receive
the survey.
(d) Those who did not respond represent a stratum, changing the simple random
sample into a stratified random sample.
(e) Those who did not respond may differ in some important way from those who did
respond.
10. Four students at a local high school conducted surveys. Shannon got the names of
all 800 children in the high school and put them in a hat, and then pulled out 60 of
them. Jake asked 10 students at an after-school meeting of the computer games
club. Adam asked all of the 200 children in Grade 10. Claire set up a booth outside
of the school. Anyone who wanted to stop and fill out a survey could. She stopped
collecting surveys when she got 60 students to complete them. Who do you think
has the best sampling method? Why?

11. Suppose you want to see if having the bank teller smile at a customer improves the
customer's level of satisfaction with the teller's performance. You decide that of the
next 10 customers, you will randomly select half of them to go to a smiling teller
and the rest will go to a non-smiling teller. Is this an example of "random
assignment" or "random sampling"?

12. As part of its twenty-fifth reunion celebration, the Class of 1980 of State University
mailed a questionnaire to its members. One of the questions asked the respondent to
give his or her total income last year. Of the 820 members of the class of 1980, the
university alumni office had addresses for 583. Of these, 421 returned the
questionnaire. The reunion committee computed the mean income given in the
responses and announced, "The members of the class of 1980 have enjoyed
resounding success. The average income of class members is $120,000!". Identify
two distinct sources of bias or misleading information in this result, being explicit
about the direction of bias you expect. Explain how you might fix each of these
problems.
13. Suppose you wanted to conduct a study to compare two medical treatments on
people with a specific medical condition. Previous research suggests that a personís
current medical condition might be related to their age, sex, previous medical
history, body mass index (a measure combining weight and height), and smoking
behavior. You are told by your statistical consultant to randomly assign the subjects
in your study to two groups, so that one treatment may be randomly assigned to
each group. A friend asks why you wouldn't be better off forcing the groups to be
balanced with respect to the characteristics listed above, instead of leaving it to
chance to make the groups comparable. How would you answer your friend?

14. Suppose X and Y have a strong correlation. If the data shown on a scatterplot were
collected based on an experiment, can we say more about the relationship than if the
data were collected from an observational study? Explain your answer.

15. A study of the relationship between physical fitness and leadership uses as subjects
middle-aged executives who have volunteered for an exercise program. The
executives are divided into a low-fitness group and a high-fitness group on the basis
of a physical examination. All subjects then take a psychological test designed to
measure leadership and the results for the two groups are compared. Is this an
observational study or an experiment? Explain your answer.
16. Suppose students want to determine whether the caffeine in a cup of regular coffee,
consumed each morning before class, can improve the performance of a typical
student on a statistics exam. Suppose all students in the 8am section are given the
treatment (1 cup of coffee) and all students in the 9am section are not permitted to
have any caffeine before class. It turned out that students in the 9am section did
better on the exam. This is not a well-designed study. Explain why "confounding"
makes it difficult to draw conclusions about the effect of caffeine on students' exam
performance from this study. (Identify a potential confounding variable.)

17. An instructor was curious about which route would get her to school faster.
Between Oct. 2 and Nov. 15, she collected data on how long the trip took for a
freeway route and for a through-town route. When she approached the turning
point, if her odometer (which reports how many miles the car has traveled in its
life) ended in an even number she took the freeway route and if an odd number she
took the through-town route.
a) Would you consider this an observational study or an experiment? Explain why
(clearly differentiating the two types of studies)

b) Suppose the instructor finds a significant difference between these two routes.
Would she have been able to conclude that the faster time to campus was due to the
route? Explain.

c) Do you think these results are representative of all the days the instructor has
driven to campus on one of these two routes? Explain why or why not.