Where Does The Statistic Come From: Economics Statistics Assignment, UCD, Ireland

1. Where does the statistic come from? Is it a piece of research that the author of the article has carried out themselves, or are they citing some research conducted by someone else?

2. Is the statistic something that is known precisely, or is it an estimate from a sample? If it is the former, how did the researchers manage to get information from every person or item in the population of interest?

3. If, as it is most likely, the statistics is an estimation from a sample:

a) What is the population of interest?

b) What is the sample size?

c) Are there any important ways in which the sample is likely to differ from the population of interest? Think about sampling bias.

d) If there are differences between the sample and the population of interest, how are they likely to affect the statistic? Do they mean that the statistic is likely to be too high or too low?

e) If an average measure is used in the article, which one is being used? Is it the mean, median, or mode? Is this a good choice? (If the claim uses an average measure but doesn’t specify which one, it is almost certainly the mean).

f) Are there likely to be large outliers?

g) Is a comparison being made in terms of raw counts when percentages would be more appropriate? Is the right percentage being used?

4. Taking all these elements into consideration, do you think the statistic tells us something useful about the real world or it is misleading?