Stat Students Answer Pressing Questions

On the last day of classes, students in “Introduction to Probability and Statistics” presented posters depicting their hypothesis-testing projects on subjects such as “Which search engine does a better job of predicting your query: Google or Bing?”

Which search engine does a better job of predicting your query: Google or Bing? That’s a question of multi-million-dollar ad campaigns and also of intrinsic importance to data-hungry college students. It was also one of a handful of questions posed by students in “Introduction to Probability and Statistics” in their hypothesis-testing projects. statposter2

 

Students in the course, which is designed for non-science majors and covers methods for organizing and summarizing data, elementary probability, and an introduction to statistical hypothesis testing, came up with questions they wanted answers to (“Do better students drink more coffee?” and “Do fiction or non-fiction books tend to remain longer on The New York Times best-seller list?”) and then set about finding statistically significant answers via surveys from fellow students. Then, on the last day of class, all the students shared posters depicting their research.

And since you’re probably still wondering: no, there’s statistical difference between the efficacy of Google and Bing. Just use the search engine you like.