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Data Set 4 I believe there is a correlation between success in life and a person

ID: 236967 • Letter: D

Question

Data Set 4

I believe there is a correlation between success in life and a person’s performance in General Biology. (Now why would you doubt that!?) I decided to measure success in terms of annual salary 10 years after graduation and performance in General Biology in terms of a student’s final class average. Below are my (completely made up) data.

Student identifier

Biology average

(% of total pts. possible)

Salary 10 years

after graduation

1

99

28500

2

78

67000

3

60

78500

4

88

64000

5

68

85000

6

91

16000

7

80

45500

8

63

80000

9

95

12500

10

76

34500

11

85

37500

12

73

77500

13

100

20500

14

60

100000

15

82

33500

16

71

50000

17

61

150000

18

84

47500

19

76

42500

20

69

50500

Which is the independent variable?

Which is the dependent variable?

Describe the relationship between biology average and salary.

Do you think there is a positive, negative or no correlation between biology average and salary – based on this obviously flawed data?

Student identifier

Biology average

(% of total pts. possible)

Salary 10 years

after graduation

1

99

28500

2

78

67000

3

60

78500

4

88

64000

5

68

85000

6

91

16000

7

80

45500

8

63

80000

9

95

12500

10

76

34500

11

85

37500

12

73

77500

13

100

20500

14

60

100000

15

82

33500

16

71

50000

17

61

150000

18

84

47500

19

76

42500

20

69

50500

Explanation / Answer

Those variables whose value does not depend on other and are independent are known as independent variables. In mathematics it is denoted by X- values. Here independent variables are the average percentage of marks obtained in the Biology subject by the students in the final class average.

Dependent variables are those variable whose value is dependent on other variables. It is usually denoted by Y-values. Here dependent variables are the annual salary of students after 10 years of graduation.

there is relationship between biology average and the salary. The student who performed excellently well in biology like students who got 100,99,91,95 marks have salaries in the range of 12,000 -28,500. Whereas students who got good marks i.e. in 80's like 80,82,84,85,88 have salaries in the range 33,500-64,000. The students whose marks are more than average i.e. marks like 71,73,76,78 are getting salaries between 33,500-77,500. The students who did not perform well in the biology eg. 60,61,63,68,69 are getting higher salaries between 50,500-15,0000. Thus lesser the marks a student gets in biology, higher is its salary.

There is a negative correlation between average biology marks of student and their salary. The students who performed well in biology have less salary after 10 years of graduation than the students who did not perform well in their biology marks.