Hi again boobee,
Before we look at the questions themselves, it is important to
understand the definition of variability. In essence, variability is
the extent to which a set of data collected from a random sample is
spread out. In statistics, this is often measured using the variance
and standard deviation.
Let's start with the first question:
"What is the probability that it will snow this coming winter?"
Does anyone really know that answer to this question? The answer is a
clear NO! Technology has not come far enough for us to predict the
weather accurately for more than a 5 day period. So when this question
was asked to the ten people, they had to rely on experience,
intuition, and knowledge of the region in order to provide an educated
answer. Though it is always likely that some people may have just
guessed without any reason at all! So we can expect that the
variability in the data collected will be fairly high, since it is
reasonable to expect that the experience, intuition, and knowledge of
each individual asked is different.
Now for the second question:
"What is the probability of getting a heart when a card is randomly
chosen from a fair deck of cards?"
We approach this question is a similar manner as the first one. Is
there a clear answer to this question? The answer is YES. This
probability is easily obtained using the following pieces of
information:
# of cards in a fair deck: 52
# of cards of each suit: 13
Proportion of hearts in a fair deck: 13/52 = 0.25 = 25%
Of course, everyone might not know the information needed to do this
calculation, and so there will be people who will have to rely on
other intuition, knowledge, and experiences to answer the question to
the best of their abilities. Since this information is quite widely
known and available, a large majority of people will apply it to
answer the question. Thus the variability is significantly lower than
the first question.
So to summarize, the variability of these two questions are affected
by the following factors:
1. Whether or not there is there a generally accepted "correct" answer
question
2. The extent to which the correct answer (if it exists) and/or the
information needed to acquire it are general knowledge.
Hope that clears it up...if you have any problems understanding the
information above please feel free to post a clarification.
Cheers!
answerguru-ga |