Question 6.102

3. Spotlight 6.3 (page 260) discussed Sir Francis Galton’s study of the heights of men and their fathers. In this writing assignment, you will adapt his study to students. In order to do so, you will need to collect the following data from one or two classes:

  • Have male students record their heights and the heights of their fathers.
  • Have female students record their heights and the heights of their mothers.
  1. Using parent’s height as the explanatory variable, make two scatterplots, one for the males and the other for the females. Find the correlations between parent’s height and student’s height for males and females. Compare the patterns in the two scatterplots for form, strength, and direction.

  2. Discuss the following algebraic representation of regression to the mean for males and females:

  3. Determine the equations for the least-squares regression lines for predicting student’s height from parent’s height. Compare and interpret the slopes of your two lines.