Statistics

In a recent article from the Newark Star Ledger, the newspaper examined the high cost of New Jersey police officers. See article link below.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/nj_police_salaries_rank_highes.html

This opened up conversation in my Statistics classes about how we can use and interpret statistics in everyday life. Some questions we asked were:

1. Why use the median salary and not the mean?
2. Does higher police pay mean less crime?
3. Does lower pay mean more crime?
4. Is median salary per county normally distributed?
5. How does NJ compare nationally on police salaries?
6. Can the state afford to continue to pay these salaries?


All of these were great questions raised by the students and opened up a wealth of conversation and discussion. Topics ranged from the most basic concepts of Statistics to trying to decipher correlation versus causation.