I think I may have to be clearer about what I have and what I want. I
am sampling names (for a mail survey) from a database of registered
voters. I want the names to be distributed geographically in
proportion to the population of the 21 counties of New Jersey.
I have 21 pairs of numbers: for each county, the percentage that county
has of the total NJ population, and the percentage that county has of
the total of all NJ registered voters. For 7 counties, the percentages
of population and voters are equal; for the remainder the absolute
value of the disparity ranges from .3 to 1.7.
So, by eye, it seems reasonable to assert that the counties register
voters at roughly the same rate. I guess the null is that there is no
difference in the proportions of county:state for voters and
population.
Sorry if this is silly or trivial; I'm just finishing up Intro. Stat.
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Nov 2000 17:51:26 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > This can't be that complicated, but I can't figure it out myself.
> >
> > I need to determine whether the distribution of the total state
> > population into 21 counties is the same as the distribution of
voters.
> > I have two lists of percentages, and they look similar by eye. How
do
> > I determine whether the differences are significant?
> >
>
> They are different.
>
> Now what do you mean by "significant"?
>
> I suppose that one meaning might be,
> "Does a contingency chi-squared test show enough difference that there
> is some decent statistical power to detect and measure a mediating
> variable (such as age)?"
>
> In that case, the simple formula uses the raw Ns in each cell, in the
> 2x21 table, Voters vs. non-voters for each county.
>
> --
> Rich Ulrich, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html
>
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