Worksheet 16: Statistical significance#
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In the chimpanzee problem-solving study:
a. What are the observations units?
b. What are the relevant variables? Are the quantitative or categorical?
In the chimpanzee problem-solving study:
a. What is the sample size?
b. What would be a relevant statistic?
What are two possible explanations for why Sarah picked the correct photo in 7 out of 8 attempts?
Of the two explanations, which do you think is more reasonable? How would you convince a skeptic that the other explanation is not as reasonable?
How can we model what the study would have looked like if Sarah was just guessing?
Based on the histogram of results:
a. What does each square represent?
b. What was the most common outcome for number of heads in 8 coin tosses?
c. Why did we need everyone to toss their coin 8 times? Why couldn’t we just ask one person and look at their results?
Where does Sarah’s observed result of 7 correct out of 8 fall in this histogram? Does “just guessing” seem to be a good explanation for 7 correct?
In the One Proportion applet .
a. What value should we use for “probability of heads”?
b. What about “Number of tosses”?
c. If we draw many samples, what does each dot in the dotplot represent?
Based on the dotplot, how would you describe the result of 7 out of eight heads? Why?
a. Very surprising.
b. Somewhat surprising.
c. Not surprising.
If you used the applet on your own, would you get the same p-value? Will the p-value be close?
Recall that \(\pi\) is the long-run frequency of Sarah selecting the correct photo.
a. Write the null hypothesis in terms of the parameter \(\pi\):
b. Write the alternative hypothesis in terms of the parameter \(\pi\):
Based on Premack and Woodruff (1978) do you have any questions related to chimpanzees’ abilities to solve problems?