PHIL 264 2021-10-22 Fr 10:00 by https://padlet.com/ckwaters/6fohw6vcz91lkmh9 en-us 2021-10-22 04:26:20 UTC 2025-12-06 12:35:05 UTC hello@padlet.com Directions and Questions ckwaters https://padlet.com/ckwaters/6fohw6vcz91lkmh9/wish/1835460376 Directions
1. Double click on peg board to create a post.
2. Put your breakout room number as the subject of the post.
3. Answer each of the following questions in the same post. Label your answers "1", "2", "3", "(a)", ...

Questions
1. What are the first and last names of the students in your breakout room? (include the Presiding Officer's name).

2. What measure of central tendency should we use to answer the following questions? Why?

(a) What is the typical amount of student debt that the students enrolled in this course have?
(b) What is the typical age of a student enrolled in this course?
(c) What was the average grade on the test for students enrolled in this course?

3. Selection effects and small sample size are two potential problems with statistical generalizations that both make it too likely that you could have made the observation even if your hypothesis was false.
Explain that idea in detail by sketching an example of a situation where you want to find out about Canada’s attitudes towards climate change, so you poll a few people outside your office in Calgary, Alberta. 

Come up with:
(a) an example of some evidence you might get
(b) a generalization you might go on to make 
(c) explain how small sample size and selection effect in the sample can contribute to a very low strength factor. 

4. Classify the following inferences as statistical generalizations or statistical instantiations, and say whether you think the argument is strong or weak. If you think it's weak, what problem can you identify?

(a) 99.44% of teaching-assistants employed by the University of Calgary complain about filling out forms. Peter is a teaching-assistant employed by the University of Calgary. Therefore, Peter complains about filling out forms.

(b) About 45% of 1,000 students randomly selected from Calgary universities are female. Therefore, between 40% and 50% of all students in Calgary are female.

(c) About 45% of 1,000 randomly selected university students are female. Therefore, exactly 45% of all university students in Calgary are female.

(d) 90% of Canadians know less about the American political system than an average American 10-year-old. There's a Canadian student in my American politics class. I really wonder how he'll pass the course when he’s that ignorant!


]]> 2021-10-22 04:26:20 UTC https://padlet.com/ckwaters/6fohw6vcz91lkmh9/wish/1835460376 Difei Xu - Individual dfx_ https://padlet.com/ckwaters/6fohw6vcz91lkmh9/wish/1836800382 1. Difei Xu

2.
(a) Truncated mean, median, and geometric mean will work. Since the amount of student in this class is small, outliers can easily skew with the data.

(b) We report ages as whole numbers. Mode will work to find the most common age.

(c) Truncated mean will work for this situation. Students who did not do the test will get a 0%, this will highly skew the average if a lot of instances are present. So, test scores with 0% should be remove from the mean calculation.

3.
(a) Potential response can be: indifferent to climate change, skeptic of climate change, acknowledges climate change but not actively responding, or activist of climate change.

(b) If the population around your office are well educated, it is more likely that they will accept scientific evidence of climate change. So you might get an overwhelming amount of supporters in regards to the legitimacy of climate change.

(c) Small sample size cannot be a good representative of Canadians as a whole. Selection bias will occur when randomization is not achieved, which is the case if the polling is only done outside your office.

4.
(a) Statistical instantiation. This argument is strong because it is very likely Peter is part of the 99.44% of the teaching assistants.

(b) Statistical generalization. This argument is strong. With the large margin of error, it is very likely the population of female students falls between 40 to 50%.

(c) Statistical generalization. This argument is weak. University demographic can be very different from other grade levels. University students are accepted through applications, while compulsory education are required for all genders in elementary school to high school. 

(d) Statistical instantiation. This argument is strong because it is very likely that the Canadian student falls under the 90% category of Canadians. ]]> 2021-10-22 16:53:46 UTC https://padlet.com/ckwaters/6fohw6vcz91lkmh9/wish/1836800382 Renata Balabuch Bezerra https://padlet.com/ckwaters/6fohw6vcz91lkmh9/wish/1837613837 1. Renata Balabuch Bezerra

2. a) I would say a student typical amount of debt is 2/3 of the course fees. They can have some before starting but would probably need to loan some. 
b) The typical age os a student in this course would be 19, since this would be the average of a college student typically doing this course on its freshman year.
c) The average grade was around 80%, a mean of all the grades from the students in this course. 

3. a) some evidence: people avoiding too use too much their cars, and avoiding to consume too much stuff generated by energy that results in CO2 and methanol being liberated.
b) That everyone in the world is doing the same things that the people outside my office in Calgary are doing towards climate change.
c) Small sample sizes and selection effect in the sample contributes to a low strength factor due to its difficult to find truly random samples. The bigger the sample, the more random it is. 

4. a) Statistical instantiation. I think it is a strong argument.
b) Statistical generalization. I believe it is a song argument.
c) Statistical generalization. I believe it is a weak argument, due to a possible selection effect.
d) Statistical instantiation. I believe it is weak argument, it is a loose generalization that Canadians barely know about American Political system.]]> 2021-10-23 04:51:33 UTC https://padlet.com/ckwaters/6fohw6vcz91lkmh9/wish/1837613837