P L T WBiomedical ScienceActivity 2.1.2 Student Response SheetPart I: AnswersExample 1:Prosthetic, Inc. and Orthotics and Prosthetics had almost identical profit increasesbetweenthe years 1998 and 2009.They-axis on Orthotics and Prosthetics' graphhas been altered to have a larger range than the range used for the y-axis onProsthetic, Inc.'s graph. If the same range was used for both graphs, they would lookas follows:Example 2:ABC.com presented that the average blood sugar level before meals for Americansis 142 mg.'dL but did not specify how the average was calculated. What they did notshare was that the mean, or arithmetic average, was calculated from a sample sizeof only four people. Of these four people, all of the blood sugar levels (before meals)were in normal ranges and one person had a blood sugar level of 240 mg/dL,causing the entire group's average to be skewed. Therefore, 75% of the blood sugarlevels of the people in the study were actually far below this average. A betteraverage to use would have been the median blood sugar level (i.e.. the blood sugarlevel in the middle of the data range). The website should have reported how manypeople were included in the study. Four people do not accurately represent theentire population.Example 3:The data presented was biased asitdid not present all of the pertinent information.The number of motorcycles on the road is significantly less than the number ofpassenger cars on the road, so simply using the number of vehicles involved in fatalcrashes is not enough to illustrate which vehicle is the safest. The following twographs, whichshowtherate ofvehicles involved in fatal crashes per100millionmiles travelled and the rate of vehicles involved in fatal crashes per 100,000registeredvehicles,represent thedatamore accurately. Usingallofthedata as awhole, passenger cars are actually involved in fewer fatal crashes than the othervehicles.Preview Mode
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