What is the difference between significance and meaningfulness?

Practice Exercise 4

Answer the following questions from Chapter 9, 10 and 11 from Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics 7 Edition by Neil J. Salkind and Bruce B. Frey

Chapter 9

8. What is the difference between significance and meaningfulness?

9. Here’s more exploration of the significance versus meaningfulness debate:
10. Provide an example of a finding that may be both statistically significant and

meaningful.

1. Now provide an example of a finding that may be statistically significant but not

meaningful.

Chapter 10

3. For the following situations, write out in words a research hypothesis.
4. Bob wants to know whether the weight loss for his group on the chocolate-only diet is

representative of weight loss in a large population of middle-aged men.

1. The health department is charged with finding out whether the rate of flu per thousand

citizens during this past flu season is comparable to the average rate during the past 50

seasons.

1. Blair is almost sure that his monthly costs for the past year are not representative of his

average monthly costs over the past 20 years.

Chapter 11

1. Using the data in the file named Chapter 11 Data Set 2, test the research hypothesis at the .05 level of significance that boys raise their hand in class more often than girls. Do this practice problem by hand, using a calculator. What is your conclusion regarding the research hypothesis? Remember to first decide whether this is a one-or two-tailed test.

2. Using the same data se (Chapter 11 Data Set 2), test the research hypothesis at the .01 level of significance that there is a difference between boys and girls in the number of times they raise their hand in class. Do this practice problem by hand, using a calculator. What is your conclusion regarding the research hypothesis? You used the same data for this problem as for Question 1, but you have a different hypothesis (one is directional and the other is nondirectional). How do the results differ and why?

9. Using the data in Chapter 11 Data Set 4 and SPSS, test the null hypothesis that there is no difference in group means between the number of words spelled correctly for two groups of fourth graders. What is your conclusion?