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Case Study #1

Math Tutorials Home > Statistics Social Sciences

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The case study we will consider looks at whether physicians treat overweight patients differently than they do normal weight patients.

Rice Virtual Statistics Lab Case Study: Physicians' Reactions to Patient Size (opens in a new window)

Start by reading the Background and Experimental Design pages for the case study (on the RVLS website) to get an overview of the question under examination and to learn how the research was conducted.

Next, carefully review the Descriptive Statistics page. To verify your understanding of the analysis, answer the questions found on this page. Several of the question require the interpretation of boxplots. Boxplots are commonly used to visually compare data sets.

If you are unfamiliar with boxplots, a link on the descriptive statistics page leads to help. In addition to the case studies, the RVLS website provides access to an online statistics textbook called Hyperstat Online. The Boxplots link is to the page in this textbook that describes how boxplots work.

Your task is to recreate the analysis shown on this page using Microsoft Excel.

Next: Get the data into the spreadsheet >>>