Assignment 2: Linear Regression

In this assignment, you will use a spreadsheet to examine pairs of variables, using the method of linear regression, to determine if there is any correlation between the variables. Afterwards, you will postulate whether this correlation reveals a causal relationship (and why).

Click here to open the Excel spreadsheet containing the data for this assignment.

This spreadsheet contains the data from a study that attempted to see if there is a correlation between the hours that a student studies and the grade that they earned on a test. The correlation test you are about to run will help you to determine if there is, in fact, a correlation between study time and test score. If you find a strong correlation, then you will postulate whether you feel this indicates a causal relationship.

Below are instructions on how to perform this correlation test in Microsoft Excel.

In the Excel spreadsheet, perform the following operations:

1. Save the spreadsheet to your computer.
2. With your mouse, highlight all of the data on the spreadsheet in columns A and B.
3. In the tabs at the top of the page, click Insert.
4. In the Insert ribbon, in the Charts section, click Scatter. Be sure to select the option where it will just plot dots, it will be called Scatter with only Markers. If you do this right, then you’ll see a chart on the page.
5. Now, on the chart, right-click on one of the data points (dots). Just pick a dot somewhere near the middle of the distribution.
6. Select Add Trendlinefrom the drop-down menu that appears when you right-click on a dot.
7. A new menu will appear. Select Linear, select Automatic, and click the boxes next to Display Equation on chart and Display r-squared value on chart.
8. Click Close.
9. Now, you should see a line drawn through the dots. It will roughly cut through the middle of the dot distribution.
10. You’ll also see the linear regression equation and r² value displayed next to the line.

To see an example spreadsheet containing a completed analysis click here.

Now that you’ve completed your analysis and determined the linear regression formula and r², it now time to report on the results of your study and examine your findings.

In a Microsoft Word document, respond to the following:

1. Report the sample you selected and the question that was explored in the study.

1. Report the r² linear correlation coefficient and the linear regression equation produced in the Excel spreadsheet.

1. What would be the value of Pearson’s r (simply the square root of r²)?

1. Would Pearson’s r be positive or negative? What does this imply about the relationship between the factors in this study?

1. What is the implication of any correlation found between the variables in the study you picked?

1. Does this correlation imply a causal relationship? Explain.

1. Are there other variables that you think should have been examined that would have improved this study or help to pinpoint what factors are causal?

For this assignment, you will submit a spreadsheet and a report. The spreadsheet will be the Microsoft Excel file containing your scatterplot and analysis. Name your Microsoft Excel file as follows: LastnameFirstInitial_M3_A2.xls.

The report will be a Microsoft Word document in which you will address all of the questions in this assignment in the form of a narrative. Name your Microsoft Word document as follows: LastnameFirstInitial_M3_A2.docx.

Submit both files to the M3: Assignment 2 Dropbox by Tuesday, April 9, 2013.

Assignment 2 Grading Criteria	Maximum Points
Complete scatterplot and attach as an Excel file (the fraction of variation in one variable should be accounted for by variation of the other).	56
Report the r2 correlation coefficient and linear regression equation with slope and intercept included and stated whether the value of r is positive or negative.	96
Explain the implication of any linear relation, including its three components (scatterplot, r2 value and linear equation) found between hours spent studying, and the exam score earned.	48
Total:	200

3. ABC buys a very risky corporate bond with a par value of $1000. It has a 16.0% coupon and matures in 8 years. They pay only $600 for the bond. a) They receive the coupon payments for three years and the bond defaults. After liquidating the firm, the bondholders receive a distribution of $150 per bond at the end of 3.5 years. What is the realized return on ABC’s investment?

Reading Comprehension Practice:

 

INSTRUCTIONS: Read this opening scene from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, practicing multi‐draft reading,
close reading, and questioning.
On the first read‐through, read mainly for a sense of plot. What is happening here? After
you’ve done the first read‐through, answer question 1 below.
On the second read‐through, read for style and structure. Use a pen or highlighter as you read
to mark repeated words, phrases, and images — noticing these repetitions will help you figure
out what Dickens is really saying, what his deeper meaning is. After you’ve finished your
second read‐through and marked the text, answer question 2 below.
On the third read‐through, put it all together, make connections, and ask questions as you
read. When you combine your understanding of plot and style — of what’s happening and
how Dickens is expressing it — what do you get? What is at stake here? Which characters are
in conflict? What is the conflict? Who is right . . . who do you think Dickens agrees with? Why?
After your third read‐through, answer questions 3 and 4 below.

 

 

 

Reading:
THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the
principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything
over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir ‐ peremptorily Thomas ‐ Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and
the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and
tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope
to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John
Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non‐existent persons), but into the head of Thomas
Gradgrind ‐ no, sir!
In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance,
or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ‘boys and girls,’ for ‘sir,’ Thomas
Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of
facts.
Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon
loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one
discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender
young imaginations that were to be stormed away.
‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger,
‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’
‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.
‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’
‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another curtsey.
‘Then he has no business to do it,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Tell him he mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is
your father?’
‘He belongs to the horse‐riding, if you please, sir.’
Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.
‘We don’t want to know anything about that, here. You mustn’t tell us about that, here. Your father breaks
horses, don’t he?’
‘If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.’
‘You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors
sick horses, I dare say?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little
pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some
boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.’
The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the
same ray of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white‐washed room,
irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up
the centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the
beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows in
advance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl was so dark‐eyed and dark‐haired, that she seemed to receive
a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone upon her, the boy was so light‐eyed and lighthaired
that the self‐same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed. His cold eyes
would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them into immediate
contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short‐cropped hair might have been
a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient
in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.
‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’
‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty‐four grinders, four eye‐teeth, and twelve incisive.
Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron.
Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’
She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed
all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the
light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles to
his freckled forehead, and sat down again.
The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in
his way (and in most other people’s too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a system to force
down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public‐office, ready to fight
all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and
whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with
his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he always fought All England) to
the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that
unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great
public‐office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth.
‘Very well,’ said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms. ‘That’s a horse. Now, let me ask you girls
and boys, Would you paper a room with representations of horses?’
After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, ‘Yes, sir!’ Upon which the other half, seeing in the
gentleman’s face that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, ‘No, sir!’ ‐ as the custom is, in these examinations.
‘Of course, No. Why wouldn’t you?’
A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer, Because he
wouldn’t paper a room at all, but would paint it.
‘You must paper it,’ said the gentleman, rather warmly.
‘You must paper it,’ said Thomas Gradgrind, ‘whether you like it or not. Don’t tell us you wouldn’t paper it.
What do you mean, boy?’
‘I’ll explain to you, then,’ said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, ‘why you wouldn’t paper a
room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in
reality ‐ in fact? Do you?’
‘Yes, sir!’ from one half. ‘No, sir!’ from the other.
‘Of course no,’ said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. ‘Why, then, you are not to see
anywhere, what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don’t have in fact. What is
called Taste, is only another name for Fact.’ Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation.
‘This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,’ said the gentleman. ‘Now, I’ll try you again. Suppose
you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?’
There being a general conviction by this time that ‘No, sir!’ was always the right answer to this gentleman, the
chorus of NO was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes: among them Sissy Jupe.
‘Girl number twenty,’ said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.
Sissy blushed, and stood up.
‘So you would carpet your room ‐ or your husband’s room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband ‐
with representations of flowers, would you?’ said the gentleman. ‘Why would you?’
‘If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,’ returned the girl.
‘And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy
boots?’
‘It wouldn’t hurt them, sir. They wouldn’t crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of
what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy ‐ ‘
‘Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,’ cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. ‘That’s
it! You are never to fancy.’
‘You are not, Cecilia Jupe,’ Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, ‘to do anything of that kind.’
‘Fact, fact, fact!’ said the gentleman. And ‘Fact, fact, fact!’ repeated Thomas Gradgrind.
‘You are to be in all things regulated and governed,’ said the gentleman, ‘by fact. We hope to have, before
long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and
of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not
to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers
in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies
come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your
crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds
represented upon walls. You must use,’ said the gentleman, ‘for all these purposes, combinations and
modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration.
This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.’
The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was very young, and she looked as if she were frightened by the matterof‐
fact prospect the world afforded.

———————————————————————————————————————————————–

Answer the following from the reading from above:

1. Write a 3‐4 sentence paraphrase / summary of this scene. What happens?

 

 

2. What words and phrases repeat in this scene?

 

 

 

3. What is the Conflict? How would you explain the viewpoints that are colliding here?
_____________________ vs. _____________________
_____________________ vs. _____________________
_____________________ vs. _____________________
_____________________ vs. _____________________

 

 

 

4. What do you anticipate the theme will be? What lesson will the characters learn?
Whose viewpoint will win? What clues in the reading make you think this?

the assignment is about the Islamic words in Quran that reflect the behavioral psychology

nothing in particular just a genereal view on what psychological direction that was presented in Quran and Profit saying or in Islam in general

 

also providing a part that was written that can be used in the essay or as a guidance

 

 

regards

Review the following information from the article “A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the New Orleans Flood Protection System” by Stéphane Hallegatte (2005):

• Hallegatte, an environmentalist, assigns a probability (p) of a Katrina-like hurricane of 1/130 in his cost-benefit analysis for flood protection. However, the levees that protect New Orleans also put other regions at greater risk. You may assume the frequency of other floods is greater than Katrina-like events (Vastag & Rein, 2011).
• The new levees that were built in response to Katrina cost approximately fourteen billion dollars (in 2010). This is in addition to the direct costs of Katrina (eighty-one billion dollars in 2005).
• 50 percent of New Orleans is at or below sea level.
• A 100-year event means that there is a 63 percent chance that such an event will occur within a 100-year period.
• The following are the interested (anchored and/or biased) constituencies:
• Residents of New Orleans—both those that can move and those who cannot move
• Residents of the surrounding floodplains at risk from New Orleans levees
• The Mayor of New Orleans
• The federal government—specifically taxpayers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Assume that the availability heuristics make people more risk averse (populations drop, at least in the short term). Consider how this would affect the local economy.

You are an analyst at FEMA and are in charge of developing a recommendation for both the state and the local governments on whether or not to redevelop New Orleans.

Write a report with your recommendation. Address the following in your report:

Part A

• Analyze the economics of New Orleans in light of the above parameters and develop your own Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) for rebuilding.
• Evaluate the value of the CBA for each constituency and integrate these estimates into a scenario model and/or decision tree. Analyze the results.
• Clearly each of these constituencies may both overlap and be prey to a variety of group dynamics internally. For one of these options, discuss the decision pitfalls to which they may be susceptible and make a recommendation on how to alleviate these pressures.
• Starting with your CBA, estimate the relevant expected utility for theinterested constituencies.

Note: You need not have absolute amounts but your relevant utilities should be proportional to one another.
Hint: If you assume that your total CBA for New Orleans is fixed for each constituency (do not forget the overlaps), then each constituency will have a piece of the utility pie.

Part B

• Make a case for or against rebuilding the city of New Orleans. This should be an executive summary; be concise and brief. Include exhibits.
• Whether you are for or against, discuss how social heuristics could be used to your advantage, both ethically and unethically, in making your case. You may choose to fill the role of one of the constituents, if you prefer.

Write an 8–12-page report in Word format. Apply APA standards to citation of sources. Use proper spelling and grammar throughout, and keep the text legible and balanced with visuals. Use the following file naming convention: LastnameFirstInitial_M5_A1.doc.