Statics Interview Question:

A scatter plot of number of teachers and number of people with college degrees for cities in California reveals a positive association. The most likely explanation for this positive Association is?

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* a) Teachers encourage people to get college degrees, so an increase in the number of teachers is causing an increase in the number of people with college degrees.
* b) Larger cities tend to have both more teachers and more people with college degrees, so the association is explained by a third variable, the size of the city.
* c) Teaching is a common profession for people with college degrees, so an increase in the number of people with college degrees causes an increase in the number of teachers.
* d) Cities with higher incomes tend to have more teachers and more people going to college, so income is a confounding variable, making causation between number of teachers and number of people with college degrees difficult to prove

Answer - b
Submitted by: Administrator