Evaluating Public Policy

Chapter 2 Minitab Express You are asked to analyze the data to see how income, the number of active primary care physicians and crime vary by region of the state. Let’s locate these variables in the dataset:

x Income: there are 2 income variables: C40 Mean Household Income, C41 Median Household Income x Number of Active Primary Care Physicians: located in C10 x Crime: there are 3 crime variables: C22 Violent Crime, C23 Criminal Cases Superior Court, C24 Crime

Index x Region of the state: located in C37

You should read the description of each variable so you understand what data being summarized (look in Course Resources for the County Data Set Definitions File). You will select one income variable and one crime variable to include in your report along with the active primary care physicians variable. To analyze the data, you will summarize each variable by region of the state. You will use the Minitab Express commands: Statistics, Describe, Descriptive Statistics.

In the next window, you’ll select the variable to summarize (income, primary care physicians or crime). I will use C12 social security beneficiaries. You will also select the Region variable in the Group variable window. You will need to use this option separately for each variable in order to use the Group variable option.

You can also select the statistics that you want to display. For this assignment, select Mean, Minimum, Maximum, N nonmissing, N missing. You can also select a Display.

Here is my output:

What do I see in the results? First I notice that the number of counties in each region varies from 21 (mountain) to 49 (coast). For Social security beneficiaries, I see that the plain counties have the highest mean and highest maximum, mountain counties have the lowest mean. It is interesting to note that although the coast counties do not have the lowest mean, these counties do have the lowest minimum.