Running the Numbers: Does It Pay?

Dr. William Ray, a research consultant, has received a government grant to research
how aspects of a students college experiences relate to his or her job performance.
The grant is the result of Senator B.G. Shot being lobbied by his constituents that
employers are discriminating against people who do not like math by giving them
lower salaries.
He hopes the results will support his legislation making
discrimination against those people who do not like math illegal. The research
questions that this particular grant proposal include:

RQ1: Does a students liking of quantitative coursework in college affect his or her
future earnings?
RQ2: Do people with an affinity for quantitative courses get promoted more quickly
than those who do not?

An e-mail survey was sent to employees of a Fortune 500 firm, and while
respondents were told their responses will be confidential, the e-mail was coded so
that the actual respondents could be identified by both e-mail address and name.
The table describes the variables that were collected.
Variables available from company records:
Variable Name
PROM
GPA
Sex

Variable Type
Whether employee has
been promoted
Self-Promoted GPA in last
year of college
Nominal data

Coding
1= Promoted
0=Not Promoted
0(lowest) to 4(highest)

1=female
0=male
School
Nominal data
School initials
Salary
Ratio
Actual Annual Salary from
Last year
Dr. Ray, however, keeps this information confidential so the company could not
identify any particular employees response. Items in the survey(X 1-X5) used likert
scale whereas items measuring students undergraduate college experience used
semantic differential scale. Description of items below:
Coding
X1
X2
X3
X4

Description
Quantitative course in school were most
useful courses
Understanding
of
topics
require
understanding of arithmetic
Hated mathematics classes in college
Learned great deal from quantitative

projects in college
Students need to study quantitative
topics in college in succeed in their
careers.

X5

Undergraduate college experience

Coding
S1
S2
S3
S4
S5

Description
Dull
Laborious
Stressful
Boring
Carefree

Questions:
1. Derive at least one hypothesis for each research question listed above.
Provide a sound rationale that leads to the hypotheses.
2. Use the data(file name: Numbers) that corresponds to this case to perform an
adequate test of each hypothesis. Interpret the results.
3. Is there evidence supporting the discrimination claim? Explain.
4. List another hypothesis (unrelated to the research questions in the grant) that
could be tested with the data.
5. Test the hypothesis.