Statistics in Your World - Level 4

This resource from the Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education (RSSCSE) consists of the level 4 units. For each unit below there are comprehensive teacher's notes giving an overview of the unit, the aims and objectives for that unit, and prior learning or prerequisites and the equipment required.

• Choice Or Chance: Students investigate the effects of chance in a variety of situations, and are asked to question the meaning and validity of advertising claims. Students should be able to list all possible outcomes for a simple experiment, assign probabilities when these outcomes are equally likely, and add simple probabilities to obtain the probabilities of compound events.
• Sampling The Census: A short classroom census is used to convey the rationale and basic methodology of the Census of Population. The problems of question design and confidentiality are considered, and the Census data is used to provide information and to make comparisons between regions and over a period of time.
• Testing Testing: The unit discusses the use of the breathalyser and mass radiography with the use of tree diagrams, ideas of conditional probability and the occurrence of errors. On completion of this unit students should have some appreciation of random selection, Type I and Type II errors, conditional probability, and have been introduced to the relationship: P(A|B) x P(B) = P(A n B).
• Retail Price Index: This unit introduces students to the concept of an index number. It starts with price relatives for individual items, builds up to calculating a weighted index number, and has a final section working out the Retail Price Index. After completing the unit the students should be familiar with the terms index number, base year, weights and the Retail Price Index.
• Figuring The Future: The theme of the unit is to build up a statistical picture over the period 1965 to 1977 and use a trend line to predict. The data used include television licences, cinema attendances and admission charges, telegrams and telephones. After working through the unit, students should be able to plot time series and fit a trend line by eye, passing through the bivariate mean.
• Smoking And Health: This unit examines of some major diseases more common among smokers. A scattergram of smoking and birth weight is examined, and students are asked to look at other evidence and consider whether smoking is harmful. Critical appraisal is invited of some conclusions of the Royal College of Physicians report Smoking OR Health (1977).
• Equal Pay: This unit investigates whether the Equal Pay Act is working, by applying statistical techniques, and considers some of the inherent problems in making comparisons. The median, cumulative percentages and the interquartile range are covered.

• Statistics in Your World - Level 4 Interactive Resource