smilennod55

a rop through my mind....
2002-03-13 02:22:54 (UTC)

how do you get an adjunct fired?

well, i'm sitting here in math lab(yes my third home, after
my dorm and the house) trying to do the corrections for my
stats test and not write "you can't teach, you dumbass" on
it, yeah, ok, so here's the big thing bothering me now:
Political pundits theorize that voting preferences depend in
part on the age, income, and gender of the voter. A
political scientist selects a larte sample of registered
voters. For each voter she records gender, age, household
income, and whether they voted Democrat, Republican,
Independant, or Other in the last congressional election.
How many variable are in this data set? Crackie the
adjucnt says wrongly "5" i, and the rest of the class say 4,
gender, age, income, and how they voted in the last
election, he says that there is a "voter variable" aka, a
number or name assigned to each individual in the set,
though this is not really a variable at all!!!! because
nowhere does it say that you collected a name or assigned as
SPECIFFIC number to each individual...so there are FOUR!
ok, so what i wrote to him (aka you're wrong motherfucker,
get it right):
I still say that it is four, and here is my reaoning for
thinking so: the question SPECIFFICALLY states that the data
COLLECTED was gender (variable one), age (variable two),
household income (variable three) and how they voted int he
last election (variable four). Note ONCE does it mention
that a number was assigned to each individual or that their
names wer ecollected, if either one of those things had been
mentioned, then yes, there would be 5 varialbes, but since
it wasn't, there are four. Also, a variable has one
SPECIFFIC value for each individual. Case in point: "mike"
is male, 27, makes 30k a year and voted independant in the
last election, now we DO NOT know that his name is mike
because it wasnt' collected (re-read your question!!) so we
can "assign" mike a number if we wish (for what purpose i
do not know), a random number from 1 to n (the number of
peopel surveyed) which yes, VARIES but is not a VARIABLE
becasue for each individual it has more than one possable
value, where as the FOUR variable stated above only have one
possable value for each individual. Also varialbes have
relavance to what is being studied and the name o the
individula or the number ARBITARILY assigned to them has
just as much baring on how the will vote as what the
individual had for breakfast. Also in a survey you do NOT
arbitrarily assign values to a KNOWN and STATED variable. If
anything it is an identifier.


ok, sorry i just needed to get that out of my system, it's
really been bugging me all day, well since monday, i hate it
when you know far more about a subject that you know very
little about than the person teaching it to you!!! good
god!!!!!!

ok, all good now, back to work for this chica!
LJ




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