AAD - First Things First Lesson

First Things First

Individuals are the objects described by a set of data.  Individuals may be people, but also animals or things.  A variable is any characteristic of an individual and can take different values for different individuals. When you encounter NEW data, ask yourself these questions before attempting to do anything with the information.  You MUST understand all aspects of the problem before proceeding.

WHO? What individuals and how many
WHAT? How many variables, their definitions, and units
WHERE?  Location of the study or experiment
WHY?  What is the reason the data were gathered.

Even though you are not familiar with all the statistics terms yet, this question is still great for demonstrating the point. Each of 100 laboratory rats has available both plain water and a mixture of water and caffeine in their cages.   After 24 hours, two measures were recorded for each rat: the amount of caffeine the rat consumes, X, and the rat's blood pressure, Y. The correlation between X and Y was .428.  

Who: 100 lab rats

What: blood pressure readings

When: not specified

Where: in laboratory

Why: a scientific concern to see if caffeine consumption affects blood pressure in rats

How: 24 hour experiment compared measurements of caffeine consumed and blood pressure  

If any of the W's are not stated in the script then we would simply say "not given."