Introduction to Statistics Through Resampling Methods and R, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11

Problem Solving

If you have made your way through the first 10 chapters of this text, then you may already have found that more and more people, strangers as well as friends, are seeking you out for your newly acquired expertise. (Not as many as if you were stunningly attractive or a film star, but a great many people nonetheless.) Your boss may even have announced that from now on you will be the official statistician of your group.

To prepare you for your new role in life, you will be asked in this chapter to work your way through a wide variety of problems that you may well encounter in practice. A final section will provide you with some over-all guidelines. You’ll soon learn that deciding which statistic to use is only one of many decisions that need be made.

11.1 THE PROBLEMS

1. With your clinical sites all lined up and everyone ready to proceed with a trial of a new experimental vaccine versus a control, the manufacturer tells you that because of problems at the plant, the 10,000 ampoules of vaccine you’ve received are all he will be able to send you. Explain why you can no longer guarantee the power of the test.

2. After collecting some 50 observations, 25 on members of a control group, and 25 who have taken a low dose of a new experimental drug, you decide to add a third high-dose group to your clinical trial, and to take 75 additional observations, 25 on the members of each group. How would you go about analyzing these data?

3. You are given a data sample and ...