Survey Paper

Descriptive Statistics Paper

Eric Oler, Stephen Hill, Yolanda Thorpe, Bill Jackson

RES/341

June 14, 2011

Charlene Dunfee

Descriptive Statistics

Over the last four weeks we have studied the wage gap between men and women. The data collected from many weeks of research shows that there is a wage disparity between men and women in the United States. The data collected revels that there are many factors that influence the wages earned by men and women across many fields. This paper takes data from both the female and the male workforce to draw a conclusion as to why the wage gap exists. The paper will go on to discuss central tendency, dispersion, skew data, and conclude with whether the research answers the problem statement.

When calculating different incomes, several years were used to see what the differences between men and women’s wages were and how they have changed. The United States Census Bureau (2010) has all the information needed to find what information on the wages that were researched. From the years 2002 to 2005 the wages have varied and have increased. Several steps were needed to find the actual differences. The central tendency consists of the mean and median of both the men and women’s wages from each year. To find the mean the average was taken and was divided by how many years there were. The dispersion rate consists of the range, variance, and standard deviation. The range was figured by taking the difference of the minimum and maximum years. When figuring the variance, the average of the squared differences of the mean was figured then that number was squared to get the standard deviation. The last set of numbers between the wages of men and women was the skew, which is basically the probability between the two, this was figured by calculating the mean and the standard deviation and by subtracting the mean from each wage. These calculations are shown to determine what the differences between men and women’s wages are through...