Question

Dependent or Independent? Listed below are systolic blood pressure measurements (mm Hg) taken from the right and left arms of the same woman at different times (based on data from “Consistency of Blood Pressure Differences Between the Left and Right Arms,” by Eguchi et al., Archives of Internal Medicine, Vol. 167). Are the data dependent or independent?

Right arm	102	101	94	79	79
Left arm	175	169	182	146	144

Short answer

The given data are dependent.

Step-by-step solution

Step 1: Given information

The systolic blood pressure measurements (mm Hg) taken from the right and left arms of the same woman at different times are listed.

Dependent Data vs Independent Data

Dependent data are data that are recorded for the same set of subjects for all the samples. They are also termed as the data that consist of matched pairs.

Independent data are data that are recorded for the different sets of subjects for different samples.

Here, the blood pressure measurements are recorded for the same woman, first for the right arm and then for the left arm.

Thus, the data considered are dependent.