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Passage Three
Questions 31 to 35 are based on the
following passage:
There were two widely divergent influences
on the early development of statistical methods. Statistics had a mother who
was dedicated to keeping orderly records of governmental units (state and
statistics come from the same Latin root, status) and a gentlemanly gambling
father who relied on mathematics to increase his skill at playing the odds in
games of chance. The influence of the mother on the offspring, statistics, is
represented by counting, measuring, describing, tabulating, ordering, and the
taking of censuses-all of which led to modern descriptive statistics. From the
influence of the father came modern inferential statistics, which is based
squarely on theories of probability.\;
Descriptive statistics involves tabulating,
depicting, and describing collections of data. These data may be either
quantitative, such as measures of height, intelligence, or grade
level-variables that are characterized by an underlying continuum-or the data
many represent qualitative variables, such as sex, college major, or
personality type. Large masses of data must generally undergo a process of
summarization or reducing to comprehensibly form the properties of an otherwise
unwieldy mass of data.\;
Inferential statistics is a formalized body
of methods for solving another class of problems that present great
difficulties for the unaided human mind. This general class of problems
characteristically involves attempts to make predictions using a sample of
observations. For example, a school superintendent wishes to determine the
proportion of children in a large school system who come to school without
breakfast, have been vaccinated for flu, or whatever. Having a little knowledge
of statistics, the superintendent would know that it is unnecessary and
inefficiency to question each child; the proportion for the entire district
could be estimated fairly accurately from a sample of as few as 100 children.
Thus, the purpose of inferential statistics is to predict or estimate
characteristics of a population from a knowledge of the characteristics of only
a sample of the population.
31.What is the passage mainly concerned
with?
A) Development and application of
statistics.
B) Origin of descriptive statistics.
C) Limitations of inferential statistics.
D) Importance of statistics.
32.Describing and tabulating are associated
with ____.
A) inferential statistics
B) descriptive statistics
C) theories of probability
D) inefficiency of counting
33.Which of the following statements is
true about descriptive statistics?
A) It combines quantitative variables and
qualitative variables.
B) It can be used to deal with only
quantitative variables.
C) It helps to summarize properties of a
group of data.
D) It helps to make predictions using a
sample of observations.
34.The word "unwieldy" in the
second paragraph is closest in meaning to ____.
A) difficult to collect B)
difficult to tackle
C) incomprehensive D)
uncontrollable
35.A sample of a population is often
examined for the following purposes except ____.
A) to make a more accurate prediction of
trend
B) to improve efficiency and avoid
unnecessary work
C) to save the trouble of approaching every
members
D) to predict characteristics of the entire
population
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