(a) Does mandatory gun ownership prevent crime? To study this, the number of burglaries committed each month in a small town were recorded for 75 months prior to passage of a bill requiring citizens to own guns and for 56 months after passage of the bill. The goal was to see if the number of burglaries committed was affected by requiring citizens to own guns. The response variable here is A. the number of guns owned. B. the number of burglaries committed. C. whether or not a burglary was committed by a gun owner. D. whether or not gun ownership is required by law. E. None of the above.
(b) Can one predict a student's score on the midterm exam in a statistics course from the number of hours the student spent studying for the exam? To explore this, the teacher of the course asks students how many hours they spent studying for the exam and then makes a scatterplot of the time students spent studying and their scores on the exam. In making the scatterplot, the teacher should A. use a plotting scale that makes the overall trend roughly linear. B. plot the score on the exam on the horizontal axis. C. first determine if the scores on the exam approximately follow a normal distribution. D. plot time spent studying for the exam on the horizontal axis. E. None of the above.
(c) A gambler conducts a study to determine whether the time it took a horse to run its last race can be used to predict the time it takes the horse to run its next race. In this study, the explanatory variable is A. the time it takes a horse to run its next race. B. all horses used in the study. C. the gambler's winnings. D. the time it took a horse to run its last race. E. None of the above.
You can earn partial credit on this problem.