RESEARCH SCHOOL OF FINANCE, ACTUARIAL STUDIES

AND APPLIED STATISTICS

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS (STAT1008)
SEMESTER 1, 2015
Assignment 1
This assignment is worth 10% of your overall course mark. Solutions should be
placed in the STAT1008 assignment box labelled with your tutors name by 11am on
Friday 20th March, 2015. The boxes are located adjacent to the office of the Research
School of Finance, Actuarial Studies and Applied Statistics.
Please present your assignment in a single stack of pages held together by a staple in
the upper left hand corner. (That is, do not use folders, plastic sheaths or other devices
to join pages together.)
On a cover sheet, a copy of which is available on the Wattle site for the course,
clearly state the details required, including your student number and your tutorial
group details (tutorial group number, day, time and tutors name).
Data relating to each question (if relevant), can be found in a MINITAB worksheet
file (.mtw) on the drive The Oracle on pebble.anu.edu.au(F:). Look in the
STAT folder, choose the STAT1008 folder, and then look in the folder called
Assignment 1.
You will be assessed on your understanding of statistics and your ability to use
Minitab, not on your typing and word-processing expertise.
In the interests of equity, late assignments will not be accepted. Please see the course
outline for more information on this matter.
Minitab should be used to produce the relevant graphics and statistics, unless the
question directs you otherwise. Answers should be presented as an edited Microsoft
Word file, obtained as illustrated in Tutorial 4. You should include all relevant graphs
and values generated in Minitab (e.g. if a question directs you to create and discuss a
graph, you should include the graph itself as well as your discussion in your submitted
assignment).
All numeric answers should be rounded to 4 decimal places as appropriate, clearly
stating where rounding has been used.
You should show all relevant calculations and working for questions which you are
instructed to do by hand. These can be typed in Word, or handwritten. Marks may
be deducted for failure to show working or calculations. Additionally, you should be
careful to define all notation used. Marks may be deducted for unexplained notation.
Further, you should be careful to specify and include units where appropriate.
HINT: In using Minitab, you may find the keyboard F3 operation useful for removing
previously stored options.

All questions in this assignment relate to handedness the preference people

show for using one hand over another. For an introduction and lots of links to
journal papers on the subject, see
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/why-lefties-makeless/383635/
Question 1
A social researcher wishes to perform a study into the handedness of ANU students
and alumni.
Some of the questions which the researcher is hoping to investigate amongst the
current and former students of ANU are:
Do you identify as left-handed or right-handed?
What is your annual income?
What is (or was at graduation from ANU) your average mark?
Are you currently unemployed, employed part-time, or employed full-time?
How many of your parents are left-handed?
He is offered the opportunity to use the universitys email network for students and
alumni (consisting of many thousands of current and former students) if he can
explain to the administrative team of the university what he wants them to do, then
they will happily comply by sending his questionnaire to the students/alumni as he
directs.
a) (3 marks) He decides to take a sample of size 200, of which half are current
students and the remainder are alumni. Give some possible reasons why she
did not use a census.
b) (4 marks) Which sampling methodology (of those listed in the Section 1
lectures and discussed in the Week 2 tutorials) would you suggest he employ
given all the information above? Give reasons for your answer.
c) (5 marks) Give a step-by-step description instructing the administrative staff
how to carry out the sampling process for the method you recommended in
part (b).
d) (6 marks) Before the questionnaire can be sent to the sample group, the
questions themselves need to be considered. Given the five research questions
above, suggest how you would ask respondents for the information
specifically suggest wording for each of the questions required. Consider
specifically any issues that may arise due to non-response, or any ambiguous
wording which may pose a problem. Explain your choices of wording.

Question 2
A similar social research experiment was conducted based at The University of
Statsville, and data are available in the Assignments area of the Oracle.
Conveniently, the researchers carried out the sampling as you suggested in Question 1

(b), the sample was chosen and contacted, and responses to the questionnaire were
then returned via email and the data condensed into a Minitab worksheet, available as
Handedness.mtw on the Oracle and the Wattle site. Note that the Alumni
grouping includes only people who have graduated within the last 3 years.
Also note that Handedness has been coded with 0 indicating right handed, and 1
indicating left handed. Similarly, employment has been coded with 0 indicating no
paid employment, 1 indicating part time work and 2 indicating full time work.
Finally, notice that although the sampling itself was carried out in the way you
suggested in Q1(b), the researchers did not see your suggestions in Q1(d).
Open and examine the worksheet.
a) (6 marks) How many variables are present in the data set as given? Classify
each as to whether it is continuous, count, ordinal or nominal, giving reasons
for your classifications.
b) (5 marks) How many records were included in the sample? Can you see any
obvious data entry errors? If so, what would you suggest the researchers do?
What will you do with this entry for our purposes? Explain and justify your
decision.
c) (6 marks) Choose one continuous and one non-continuous variable in the
worksheet and use appropriate graphical and numeric tools to describe the
distributions as completely as you are able. You will be graded on your
choices of variables, your choices of graphs and numeric statistics, and your
interpretation of both the graphs and numeric summaries.
d) (5 marks) Considering your variables chosen in (b), investigate through
graphical and numeric techniques if there seems to be any relationship
between the two variables. Comment on each graph and numeric measure you
create.
END OF ASSIGNMENT