Producing Data

Endnotes

1. Table from Kamin, L. J. (1974). The Science and Politics of I.Q. Potomac, ML.: Laurence Erlbaum Associates.

As Kamin notes with some irony, “Professor Burt's data seem remarkably insensitive to changes [such as changes to the number of twins in the study]” (p. 38) and "the remarkable consistency of his data supporting the hereditarian position often taxes credibility (p. 47).

2. Modified from p. 51 Moore, D. S. (1991). Statistics: Concepts and Controversies. 3rd Ed. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.

3. A very useful example is stratified random sampling in which the population is divided into relatively homogeneous strata and simple random sampling is used in each stratum. The fraction of the population in each sample might vary substantially between strata.

4. Bryson, M. C. (1976). The Literary Digest poll: The making of a statistical myth. The America Statistician, 30, 184-185.

5. The New York Times, (1987). How the poll was Conducted, 9 January, B2 L.

6. The formulae for the margin of error is conservative as it is correct for proportions of 0.5, close to correct (but a slight overstatement) for proportions between 0.3 and 0.7, and a substantial overstatement if the proportion is close to 0 or 1.

7. Moses, L. E. & Mosteller, F. (1989). The Safety of Anaesthetics, In J. M. Tanur et al (Eds.), Statistics: A guide to the Unknown 3rd Edition. (pp. 15-24). Pacific Grove, CA.: Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole Advanced Books & Software.