Chapter 1, Problem 38E

(Exercises 27–40) For each description of data, identify the W’s, name the variables, specify for each variable whether its use indicates that it should be treated as categorical or quantitative, and, for any quantitative variable, identify the units in which it was measured (or note that they were not provided).

38. Walking in circles People who get lost in the desert, mountains, or woods often seem to wander in circles rather than walk in straight lines. To see whether people naturally walk in circles in the absence of visual clues, researcher Andrea Axtell tested 32 people on a football field. One at a time, they stood at the center of one goal line, were blindfolded, and then tried to walk to the other goal line. She recorded each individual’s sex, height, handedness, the number of yards each was able to walk before going out of bounds, and whether each wandered off course to the left or the right. No one made it all the way to the far end of the field without crossing one of the sidelines. (Source: STATS No. 39, Winter 2004)