Stat Basics
Facts, numbers, or labels collected from observations, such as the heights of 30 students.
What is Data
You survey the first 20 people you meet in the cafeteria.
What is a convenience sample
A study that collects data at one point in time, like a survey of today's student sleep habits.
What is a cross-sectional study
A table showing how many students chose each favorite color (red: 8, blue: 12, green: 5).
What is a categorical frequency distribution
You flip a fair coin and get heads 5 times in a row. Give the probability of heads on flip #6.
What is 50% (1 in 2)
The entire group you want to study. Surveying every member of it is called this.
What are a population and a census?
An online poll says "Click here to vote!" and only motivated people respond.
What is a volunteer sample
In a study of whether study time affects test score, test score is this type of variable, and study time is the other.
What are the dependent (sleep scores) and independent (study time) variables
Classes are 10-19, 20-29, 30-39. Give the class width and the midpoint of the first class.
What are 10 (class width) and 14.5 (midpoint)
Steve Harvey is the host of what game show?
Family Feud
Favorite pizza topping is this type of measure, while number of siblings is the other.
What are qualitative and quantitative
Number the roster, pick a random starting point, then take every 17th student.
What is a systematic sample
One group gets the new drug, the other gets a sugar pill. Name both groups, then name the effect when the sugar-pill group improves anyway.
What are the treatment (experimental) group and the control group, and the placebo effect.
Give the class boundaries of the class 20-29.
What are 19.5 and 29.5
The show Seinfeld is a show about nothing. What city did the show take place in?
What is New York City
Number of pets is this kind of variable (counted, with gaps). Exact height is the other kind (any value in an interval).
What are discrete and continuous
what do you call picking names out of a hat, where everyone has an equal chance?
A random sample
Workers become more productive just because they know they're being watched.
What is the Hawthorne effect
The classes 0-9, 10-19, 20-29 have frequencies 4, 6, and 5. What is the cumulative frequency for 0-29?
What is 15
This actor locked himself in a room for 3 hours a day for 4 months learning piano for his role in La La Land.
Who is Ryan Gosling
A headline says "Study shows people who eat breakfast are healthier, so breakfast makes you healthy!" What misuse of stats is being made?
What is correlation doesn't equal causation
Split the school into freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, then randomly pick 25 from each. Then name the method that randomly picks 3 whole homerooms and surveys everyone in them.
What are a stratified sample and a cluster sample?
Ice cream sales and drownings both rise in summer, and heat is the hidden factor behind both. What is heat?
A confounding variable
This graph shows two groups side by side in each category, like boys and girls per grade.
What is a compound bar graph
The World Cup this year was in the United States primarily. The last time the World Cup was in the US was 1994. What country won the 2026 World Cup and the previous World Cup in the US in 1994?
What is España and Brasil. (Spain and Brazil)