Question

For the situations described. (a) What are the cases? (b) What is the variable and is it quantitative or categorical? Collect data from a sample of teenagers with a question that asks "Do you eat at least five servings a day of fruits and vegetables?"

Short answer

The cases are the teenagers. The variable is the teenagers' responses to the question whether they eat at least five servings a day of fruits and vegetables, which is categorical.

Step-by-step solution

Identifying the cases

The term 'cases' in statistics refers to the individual units about which data is collected. In this context, the 'cases' will be the teenagers from whom the data is collected.

Identifying the variable

The variable is the characteristic of interest that is measured or observed from the cases and which varies from case to case. Here, the variable is the answer to the question 'Do you eat at least five servings a day of fruits and vegetables?' It represents the diet habit of the teenagers.

Identifying the type of variable

Once the variable is determined, it is necessary to identify if it is a quantitative or a categorical variable. A quantitative variable is a numerical variable whose values can be counted or measured, while a categorical variable is one that has two or more categories, but there is no order or priority in the categories. Here, the variable 'Do you eat at least five servings a day of fruits and vegetables?' is categorical as it would yield answers categorized likely as 'yes' or 'no'.