STATISTICAL INFERENCE: Working with Distributions Problem Set 4 ______________________________________________________________________________ Is Little Johnny a Dough-Head? 2-1.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests, unlike most things in nature, are designed to have a normal distribution with a mean of 100.0 and a standard deviation (SD) of 15.0. Suppose now that you have just received through the mail an ad which looks like this:

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A scientific study of 25 children randomly sampled from all over Dundas, O ntario showed an average IQ score of 108 after only six weeks of the fantastic DDDD Program.

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a) Leaving aside the emotional appeal and the flaws in the study design, what is the likelihood that a random sample of 25 kids from Dundas could have had an average IQ of 108 or higher by chance alone, assuming that IQ is distributed in the population of Dundas just the same as everywhere else (mean= 100, SD= 15). In other words, what is the chance of observing a difference at least this large, under the null hypothesis that the program had no effect?

b)

How big a difference is necessary to conclude that the program really had a benefit (with the usual level of statistical significance of .05)?

c)

The preceding calculation assumed that the program would have a benefit. Suppose that there is a chance it could lower the kids I.Q. Now we might want to frame the problem differently, so we are interested in differences in either direction. How big a difference to conclude that the program had a significant effect (in either direction)?

f)

Finally, what is the power of the study to detect a difference of 10 points or more?

Now, let s start over again. Assume that we did exactly the same experiment, only using a sample size of 9, not 15. a) What is the probability of detecting a treatment effect of 8 IQ points under the null hypothesis?

b)

What is the minimum difference which will result in a conclusion to reject H0 (what is the critical value?)

c)

Asking the question a different way, assume the treatment really did work, and the true gain was 10 I. Q. points. If you use the conventional level of significance (.05) to establish a critical value above which you will declare a significant difference, what is the likelihood that you reached the wrong conclusion , and decided that the treatment didn t work when it did? That is, what is the likelihood that you will accept H0 when in fact, H1 is true?

d)

What is the power to detect a difference of 10 I.Q. points?