Question

The University of Chicago’s General Social Survey (GSS) is the nation’s most important social science sample survey. The GSS asked a random sample of adults their opinion about whether astrology is very scientific, sort of scientific, or not at all scientific. Here is a two-way table of counts for people in the sample who had three levels of higher education degrees:

	Degree Held
	Junior College	Bachelor	Graduate
Not at all scientific	47	181	113
Very or sort of scientific	36	43	13

Find the two conditional distributions of degree held: one for those who hold the opinion that astrology is not at all scientific and one for those who say astrology is very or sort of scientific. Based on your calculations, describe with a graph and in words the differences between those who say astrology is not at all scientific and those who say it is very or sort of scientific.

Answer 1

Let JC = Junior college

B = Bachelor

G = Graduate

NS = Not at all scientific

VS = Very or sort of scientific

Here we want to find two conditional distributions:

1) Let's make table in excel:

The graph of the above conditional distribution is as follows:

2)

1 Degree held| VS frequency probability 36 0.391304 43 0.467391 13 0.141304 92 JC 4 G 5 total

The graph of the above conditional distribution is as follows:

From the above graphs we conclude that the change in the probabilities of JC and G when the conditions are changes from NS to VS.