Question

Suppose you have been contacted by a reporter from the local newspaper who came across data showing that men tend to be sentenced more harshly than women. The reporter believes this to be a clear case of discrimination and asks you for comment. What is your response? Do you agree that gender discrimination has been demonstrated here, or do you need more information? If the latter, what additional data would you need before you could arrive at a conclusion? These questions are related to the chapter about types of variables and levels of measurement

Answer 1

As an statistical point of view I will go with some more information.first of all my hypothesis is about the discrimination on the basis of gender.if P1 is the proportion of male who are sentenced harshly and P2 is same for women.

My hypothesis is-

H0:P1=P2

H1:P1>P2

Now we have some data on the sentences of men and women.

From the given data we can calculate P1and P2 and use t test for proportion of two population.

On the basis of result of test,we will come at any decision about the discrimination of men and women.

But for a non statistical person we can also compare on the basis of average number of sentences of men and women.