Assignment 1
Chapter 1.
6. Many drug safety research studies are sponsored by pharmaceutical companies that would financially benefit if the results of the study are favorable. Is this an example of a potential confounding factor?
If the sample to test is selected to favor the results of the drug company, it would be categorized as a confounding factor, but if instead the drug company is sponsoring a serious study where the sample is selected randomly and divided in treatment and control groups, the experiment will be fairly analyzed and the results will be closed to reality.
13. Below are some data from 2005 for on-the-job deaths in dangerous jobs. Which job seems the most dangerous? Which seems the least dangerous? Explain.
After calculating the percentage of employee’s deaths per total employees, Fishers and Fishing workers appears to be the most dangerous with a percentage of .12% of deaths per total employees, but instead the job that appears to be the least dangerous is Construction Laborers with a .023% of deaths per total employees. Regardless of having the government data and assume by the data the most and least dangerous jobs, I will think we need different data that shows other types of death’s variables, such as deaths cause by natural causes, aging, health issues or accidents, to make the result more realistic.
15. A recent Harvard Business Review article titled “When to sleep on it” discusses the usefulness of deliberating a business decision. The article describes a study in which subjects were asked to make a number of decisions and each subject was given the option to decide immediately or deliberate while performing an unrelated task. The researchers found that subjects who answered immediately made the best decisions and that “the longer our participants thought about their answers, the more likely they were to include irrelevant information at the expense of relevant information.” The article concludes that “conscious deliberation, however long
6. Many drug safety research studies are sponsored by pharmaceutical companies that would financially benefit if the results of the study are favorable. Is this an example of a potential confounding factor?
If the sample to test is selected to favor the results of the drug company, it would be categorized as a confounding factor, but if instead the drug company is sponsoring a serious study where the sample is selected randomly and divided in treatment and control groups, the experiment will be fairly analyzed and the results will be closed to reality.
13. Below are some data from 2005 for on-the-job deaths in dangerous jobs. Which job seems the most dangerous? Which seems the least dangerous? Explain.
After calculating the percentage of employee’s deaths per total employees, Fishers and Fishing workers appears to be the most dangerous with a percentage of .12% of deaths per total employees, but instead the job that appears to be the least dangerous is Construction Laborers with a .023% of deaths per total employees. Regardless of having the government data and assume by the data the most and least dangerous jobs, I will think we need different data that shows other types of death’s variables, such as deaths cause by natural causes, aging, health issues or accidents, to make the result more realistic.
15. A recent Harvard Business Review article titled “When to sleep on it” discusses the usefulness of deliberating a business decision. The article describes a study in which subjects were asked to make a number of decisions and each subject was given the option to decide immediately or deliberate while performing an unrelated task. The researchers found that subjects who answered immediately made the best decisions and that “the longer our participants thought about their answers, the more likely they were to include irrelevant information at the expense of relevant information.” The article concludes that “conscious deliberation, however long