Devoted to images that illustrate statistical ideas
Monday, March 25, 2013
Age of the Oldest Person You Know
From a Prudential TV commercial that has people place large, round stickers on a number line to represent the age of the oldest person they know. This forms a histogram or dotplot. The message is to have Prudential prepare you to have adequate money for all these years. You can add your own sticker at the Prudential website. Here is a video behind the scenes.
I've thought about this some more. What we have in this dotplot is the sampling distribution of the age of the oldest person known to the individuals participating. Of course, the size of their acquaintance pool varies. Those with many acquaintances are more likely to see older folks. But this is a sampling distribution of the oldest person in these varying pools.
Misleading or not, the commercial is unique and offers much scope to introduce interesting topics in statistics and modeling. See http://www.numericinsight.blogspot.com
3 comments:
I've thought about this some more. What we have in this dotplot is the sampling distribution of the age of the oldest person known to the individuals participating. Of course, the size of their acquaintance pool varies. Those with many acquaintances are more likely to see older folks. But this is a sampling distribution of the oldest person in these varying pools.
Misleading or not, the commercial is unique and offers much scope to introduce interesting topics in statistics and modeling. See http://www.numericinsight.blogspot.com
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