comment on this post, what can you advise and suggest?

1A. Illustrate how you would agree with your friend's position, from a statistical analysis perspective.

In a way, my friend could be using statistical analysis without even knowing. The experience she has could have some underlying statistical means. Such as, she might draw her conclusions of "this will do well" from other companies who have used statistical analysis to ensure their success. Considering her business has been successful for many years, her judgment calls are working and the "numbers" are "adding up" to do well. There might have been some less than savory decisions but overall in the end it has ended up working for her. The more you make decisions, the more second nature they become without having to think about them as much.

B. Illustrate how you would disagree with your friend's position, from a statistical analysis perspective.

Even though she might be skeptical of statistics, they can do nothing but help her if done correctly. As stated above, some of her inspiration for business decisions could have come from other companies who have done statistical analysis regarding the matter. These analyses would help secure a better understanding of the decisions she is making. It will help avoid unsavory decisions in the future. Also, they can be used in addition to her judgment calls, to guarantee success. If her judgment and the numbers coincide, she would just be that much more sure of the decision she wants to make.

C. How does the fact that your friend is successful affect the relationship you believe exists between business success and statistical analysis? Speculate on the apparent contradiction and the possible reasons.

Part of it could be dumb luck, but I believe statistical analysis is a supplementary and complementary action to having the right knowledge and mindset. The two go hand in hand to ensure success. The mindset of an entrepreneur is not one that all have, and some are much better than others. That is probably why her business has been successful. The use of statistical analysis could only do more good for the company. Instead of just a "small business", she could start to expand with help from statistics.

D. Nevertheless, your friend is interested in any advice you can give her. In Chapter 3, Descriptive Statistics, many numerical measures are listed. If you only had twenty minutes to explain several of the measures listed in the chapter, which measures would you choose to explain to your friend and explain why those measures would have the most effect on your friend's bottom line as a small business owner. What precautions should your friend consider if she decided to rely on the measures you suggested? Use the following article to support your choice.

Some of the measures I would suggest would be that of collecting nominal data and ordinal data in regards to her customer base. For nominal data, it would be good for her to collect data of the type of people, such as sex or ethnicity, who frequent her business. This way, she can cater more towards the current customers to maximize profits, or to expand into a different set of customers. For ordinal data, she would have to conduct surveys from a sample set of customers. These surveys, with asking the right questions, would help her to improve the current state of her business. As mentioned in the article, having ordinal data may skew the results depending on the level of perceived difference between the levels of responses such as "never, occasionally, always".

E. You have another friend who owns a large restaurant and who describes the lunch and dinner hours as very chaotic. He has asked you to create a data dashboard with key performance indicators (KPIs) that both the staff and guests of the restaurant can see. Describe the KPIs that you would display on the data dashboard and explain the reasons for your choices. Be sure to consider the type of business and what the staff AND guests would consider to be important.

For the first KPI, I would try to set a goal for a standard time, depending on the type of food, in which the order is rung up and then delivered to the customers table without sacrificing quality. This way, customers are never waiting too long for their food, and they might be in and out of the restaurant quicker to ease the rush time. This would increase their likelihood of returning as well, knowing the customer service is quicker. This may be a tough goal for the employees, but considering the better speed at which they work means potential higher tips. Another KPI might be tracking the amount of errors that are made by the servers and looking to improve that. This would make it so that the customer doesn't have to waste more time in house by reordering the food/getting it fixed. It would also help the chefs not waste time by making the wrong dishes to help ease the rush hours.

2A. What difference does it make, whether a sample is random or not? Evaluate the consequences of not using a random sample.

With a sample being random, it allows for a more general result that encapsulates the subject more. When you look at the results of the analysis, you know that should you go and gather more data yourself, it will be similar to that of the original study. Also, you know that using that sample data set will be more effective. Should the sample not be random, the data could be skewed in one direction. The gatherers of the data could potentially have an answer they want to be shown, and only gather data supporting their answer. Or, in the less malicious manner, the gatherers of data could just accidentally gather data from a more concentrated data form and not truly get a diverse or random data set.

B. How does a researcher actually get a random sample?

There are multiple manners in which a researcher can get a random sample. Firstly, it would be good to have multiple people getting the data. This would allow for more variance of the choice of data points gathered. Another way might be what is called the lottery method. With this, you have all the data points and you pick them at random, like "drawing from a hat". You do not know which data points get picked and you use the random ones. Another way would be to assign each data point a number, and use a random number generator to pick each data point that will be in your sample.

C. In your judgment, is it usually easy or difficult to get a random sample and why?

I would say it is generally more difficult. The act of picking at random itself might be easy, especially with technology today, but the data gathering process is difficult. When dealing with people, you must have a list of every member of the population you are trying to gather data about. Also with people, if conducting a survey, you need to ensure the highest number of participants of the sample set so as to ensure that there is no bias in the results. These days, it seems to be less likely that people will fill out surveys without some enticement. Also, getting the information of everyone involved in the sample can prove to be quite difficult.

1. (<-- I can't get the 1 to go away to replace with a D) If you wanted to get a random sample of the residents of the city of Newport News about their views on raising property taxes to build additional public schools, how would you actually go about producing the sample and how would you ensure that the sample was indeed a random sample? Please explain. If you wanted a sample size of 1000 residents, state how you would construct a plan to obtain the sample of 1000 residents.

The first step would be to obtain information on the residents of Newport News, mainly their addresses. I would then assign a number to each household, including apartments. Then, using a random number generator, such as Excel's "=RAND()" function, I would draw 1000 numbers. This would ensure that all 1000 participants are drawn truly at random from the entire population of Newport News. Then, I would send these surveys to each of the households and ask them to participate, or potentially have people go door to door. This would be the hardest step, as it would take a lot of people and time to go door to door. Also, there is no guarantee that everyone will respond, which could skew the results.

E. What are the drawbacks to your method above and what alternative would you suggest for the method you stated above?

The main drawbacks of the method above would be that it would take a lot of time to gather the addresses of every household. Part of that time would be separating residential addresses from commercial addresses. Also, gathering the information from each household could take a long time. People may take a long time to take the survey and return it as well. The drawbacks from the gathering of information would be the same regardless of the method you choose, as you are trying to get peoples' opinions on a subject. That requires individual responses from each of the 1000 participants.

F. Identify and describe the circumstances when you would consider measuring an entire population (parameters) instead of taking and measuring samples (statistics).

The main circumstance would be when the population is small enough to do so. The size of the population will change how much time and money might be required to gather the data. For example, you wouldn't want to gather information from all ~ 185,000 people in Newport News. This would take too much time and money, and no guarantee of success. Though, if you were conducting surveys of small businesses in Newport News, the number of the entire population would be much smaller. Also, gathering information of the entire population is needed for things such as voting. Though not all people vote, everyone has the right to vote and would be much better if everyone did vote.