What's What?

Advertising Claims
'8 out of 10 owners said their cats prefer Whiskas' claims a television advertisement.

Does this mean that Whiskas is very much better than other cat foods?

1. Write down what you think the advertisement means.

A cat is given two bowls of cat food, only one of which contains Whiskas. It eats the Whiskas and leaves the other one. Some people sav that this shows the cat prefers Whiskas, but this may not be true.

2. Make a list of possible reasons why the cat may ignore the second bowl.

It may have been chance that the cat ate the Whiskas first, and was then full up.

Taste Testing
In a competition 100 people were each offered three cups of coffee. They were told that one was Brazilian, one Continental and one Kenyan. They were asked to taste the coffee and then to identify which was which.

A prize was offered to anyone who named each sort of coffee correctly.

1. What would you expect to happen if the coffees tasted the same?
2. What would you expect to happen if the coffees tasted different?

Even if there is no difference in taste, or the people who entered the competition knew nothing about coffee, a few people may identify the coffees correctly, just by guessing, by CHANCE alone.

In this unit we shall be looking at how often such results can happen just by chance.

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