PA 710
Homework #5
Spring 2001  
Due April 2

Descriptive Statistics and Probability Theory

 From Meier and Brudney, please do the following problems (please show all your work)

3.14, 4.5, 4.8, 5.2, 5.3, 6.6, 6.7

 Lab Exercise: (Please turn in your output)

1.  Attached please find the responses of the five survey respondents to the 2001 San Francisco Citizen Survey.

a)     Set up an SPSS data file to analyze these data.

b)     Print out a frequency distribution of your responses.

2. Open Citizen2000.sav (Note: You will be prompted to save this file to your harddrive, diskette or whatever.  You must have SPSS loaded on the computer you are using to work with it).  These are last year’s results.

 a)     Choose a question that asks respondents to rate something.  Run a frequency distribution, the descriptive statistics we discussed in class, and produce a bar chart.

b)     I am going to ask you to run some measures of central tendency. Should any of the values be excluded before making these computations?  If so, which? (Please explain).

c)     Write a paragraph about your results for the Mayor.  Include the following.

                                               i.      How does the “average” citizen feel about the issue you selected?

                                           ii.      Does the median or modal response tell you anything different than the mean?  If so, what? Which statistic would more accurately reflect citizens’ feelings about the issue?

                                          iii.      How tightly or broadly distributed are the responses to this question? What does this tell you?