Tiffany Rice

Mat 201

TV vs. News

Modern television was invented in the year 1929. Since then, it has taken

over the spare time of many Americans. Children are watching more TV

instead of playing outside and college students watch MTV, as well as other

such shows instead of the news. Now, with the world at the brink of war, do

college students pay attention to the news? Thirty college students were

surveyed and asked two questions. How many hours of television do you

watch a week? How many hours of that is the news? The results to this

survey can be interpreted in many different ways. I predict that the hours

of news watched per week will be significantly less then the amount of

television watched per week.

College students watch an average of 11.4 hours of television per week. Of

that number, 2.6 hours is the average amount of news watched per week. The

median number of hours of television watched per week is 8, with the median

of news being watched being 2. The amount of television watched per week

has a standard deviation of 8.72, with news being 2.73. Both the median

and standard deviation are very close to the mean. Thus, we can conclude

that the binomial distribution is normal.

In this survey the null and alternative hypothesis were tested. The null

hypothesis for this experiment was the mean of television watchers being

equal to the mean of news watchers. The alternative hypothesis for this

experiment was that more television is watched per week then the amount of

news. The work for this hypothesis test is stated in appendix one and was

tested at a .05 level. In conclusion, we reject the null hypothesis that

news is equal to television watch per week. We need a larger sample size

and further testing to draw any further conclusions.

 There are three separate confidence intervals for this experiment. Given

the paired data sample with 95% confidence I can concur that the true mean

lies between 5.87 and 11.69. With a 95% confidence level the true mean for

television watchers lies between 8.17 and 14.69. Next, the confidence

interval for news watchers is between 1.62 and 3.67. The confidence

interval of the paired data indicates of those surveyed the true average of

television and news watchers. These numbers give a more accurate interval

because it excludes extenuating circumstances.

Regression in this survey is very moderate. The best way to determine this

is drawing the least squares line. The least squares line is interpreted

in page five of the appendix. The regression for this survey was .477.

From this value it can be concluded that both values have a positive

correlation and that y values are larger the x values. The regression

squared value for this survey is .228. From this we can determine that

there is a slight correlation between the amount of television and news

watched.

In conclusion, among college students the time spent watching television is

directed towards non-news entertainment. The correlation within this data

does not show a significant relationship between watching regular

television and watching the news. These results could show higher

correlation if the sample size was larger, and the ages of those surveyed

were more diverse. It is the opinion of this author, that the news is not

as important as homework and getting other things in life done.