Question

Ariel has discovered that ice-cream sales are positively correlated with occurrences of heat stroke. She suggests that ice-cream consumption could be a cause of heat stroke. Do you agree with Ariel? Explain why or why not?

a) Based on the situation outlined below, identify the dependent and independent variables.

b) Is her conclusion valid? Justify why or why not

c) List a possible extraneous variables in the study.

Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) is conducting an experiment on a new brand of sleeping pills. She performs a multi-stage survey on 80 people in total. Of those participating she chooses 40 of them to try the new brand of sleeping pills and the other 40 to have a placebo. She finds out that those who took the drug slept for 2 extra hours at night and so concludes that it's the most effective sleeping pill in the world.

Answer 1

a) Based on the outlined situation, the dependent variable is occurance of heat strokes and the independent variable is ice-cream sales.

b) No her conclusion that ice-cream consumption could be a cause of heat stroke is not valid. The question states that both have a strong correlation, but correlation doesn't lead to causation. Correlation only tells that they have a linear relation and not about what would be causing the event.

c) And extraneous variables could be temperature.

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