On the last three Friday evening, City hospital diagnosed a number of heroin overdoses. There were four on 1/14/20xx, two on 1/21/20xx, and six on 1/28/20xx.
a) "City Hospital averaged four herion overdoses in their ER for the last three Firday evenings" Is the statement descriptive statistics or inferential statistics?
b) "City Hospital never has more than six herion overdoses on Friday evenings"
Is the statement descriptive statistics or inferential statistics?
c) "Friday nights are the busiest time for herion overdoses at City Hospital"
Is the statement descriptive statistics or inferential statistics?
a, b. No inferences being made.
c. There is no data for other nights, so this is an inference.
a) The statement "City Hospital averaged four heroin overdoses in their ER for the last three Friday evenings" is an example of descriptive statistics. Descriptive statistics involve summarizing and describing data in a specific sample or population, in this case, the number of heroin overdoses in City Hospital's ER on Friday evenings.
To arrive at this statement, one would simply calculate the average (mean) number of heroin overdoses from the given data for the last three Friday evenings.
b) The statement "City Hospital never has more than six heroin overdoses on Friday evenings" is also an example of descriptive statistics. It describes a specific characteristic of the data (i.e., the maximum number of heroin overdoses observed on Friday evenings at City Hospital). This information can be obtained by analyzing the dataset without making any generalizations or inferences about the larger population.
c) The statement "Friday nights are the busiest time for heroin overdoses at City Hospital" is an example of inferential statistics. Inferential statistics involve making inferences or generalizations about a population based on a sample. In this case, the statement suggests that the data collected from City Hospital can be used to make a broader claim about heroin overdoses on Friday nights in general. To confirm or support this statement, a larger sample or data from other hospitals or locations would be needed to draw a valid conclusion about the overall trend of Friday nights being the busiest time for heroin overdoses.