Clinical Biostatistics: Head circumference exercise

This website is for students following the M.Sc. in Evidence Based Practice at the University of York.

The following two graphs show head circumference by sex for 120 female and 64 male biomedical science, medical, nursing, physiotherapy, and radiography students.

In the first figure, a small amount of random variation has been added to the variables so that coincident points can be seen. This is called 'jitter'.

See detailed description at d. d

Questions

1. What kinds of graph are these?

Check suggested answer 1

2. What kind of variable is head circumference?

Check suggested answer 2

3. We want to estimate a confidence interval for the difference in head circumference and test the null hypothesis that mean head circumference is equal for male and female students, what methods would we consider?

Check suggested answer 3

4. Which of these would be suitable here?

Check suggested answer 4

5. The 95% confidence interval, males minus females, = 12 to 25 mm, P < 0.0001. What could we conclude from this?

Check suggested answer 5

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Last updated: 31 July, 2006.