Mortality Data

There's nothing like some good mortality data to start the ball rolling each semester! I want you to explore this data set and tell me via lively discussion what you think the data are about. Post your ideas and snippets of your analysis. I will chime in and let you know whether you are right or wrong.

Let me explain a bit...

The data file is 1000 observations that have 6 pieces of information. If you hover over the little red triangles (indicating a comment) in cells A1-F1, you'll see a brief description of what the column is about. What you need to know is that each of the people (or subjects in research parlance) have been subjected to a treatment. Some of the subject died and some didn't.

I used the word treatment in the previous paragraph, and it's important to note that I am using it in the way an experimental researcher uses the term. For example, I might decide to test whether students learn better with videos accompanying written directions. I take two sections of MBA 5352 and teach the same topic and give one section text, PowerPoint slides, and supplemental videos while the other section just reads text and PowerPoint slides. In this example, the treatment is whether the students watched videos. Treatments can be all sorts of things - they could be an experimental medicine, a set of instructions, a behavioral difference, environmental conditions, etc.

So in this data set, all of the entries received some treatment, which resulted in the demise of some of the subjects but not all of them. Your objective here is to figure out the treatment based upon your analysis of the data.

Don't despair, you can draw upon your Excel savvy from Statistics, Spreadsheet Modeling or any other techniques (Tableau, SPSS, SAS, or Orange to name a few) that you learned elsewhere.

If you have had this class before, or seen this before, please refrain from posting.

Once you have made your first educated guess in this discussion, you will unlock a series of videos that provide a demo of me working with this data. It's highly likely that you have tried a few of the approaches I demonstrate here. You are more than welcome to employ any of these techniques if you haven't already and make another stab at the question. You will find these new videos right below where the discussion thread is in this week's module.