Jeff is 34 years old. He has been working in the manufacturing industry since he left school 16 years ago. His most recent job was working for a company that manufactured small appliances. He has just been laid off, along with about 130 other workers, because his company is downsizing due to loss of business. Downsizing is the term used when a company reduces its number of employees. This reduces the payroll expense of the business.

Imagine that you are a counsellor who has been hired by the company as a consultant to advise the laid-off employees about their options. The role of the counsellor is to provide the employees of the client company with facts and data to help them make informed decisions about career and job choices. Jeff and several of his friends who were also laid-off wonder if the layoffs are temporary and what the chances are of any of them being asked to return to the job.

The consultant has access to the following information:

Data from Statistics Canada
Long Description

Making Informed Decisions

Long Description

Statistics and Decision Making

There are many places to get the kind of data that we saw in Jeff’s story. Statistics Canada (known as StatCan), is a government agency whose job it is to gather data and analyse statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture.

Sources of Data

Statistics Canada collects information two main ways: the Canadian census and surveys.

The census

The national census began in 1871 and continues to today. The census takes place every five years. The data is kept secure and confidential.

The census provides data about the population of Canada, such as age, gender and income. It is used to plan public services such as education and health care, as well as for other things like determining the number of Members of Parliament for each province and territory.

The census includes all inhabitants of Canada. You do not need to be a citizen. You only need to live in Canada to be included. In fact, participation in the census is mandatory. Every household is required to participate.

Surveys

Surveys are different from the census. The census involves the entire population of the country. A survey, however, involves only a smaller sample of the population of Canada. Many fewer people are involved in a survey. StatCan conducts about 350 surveys on an ongoing basis.

Populations and samples

In statistics, the population refers to the entire group being looked at by the statistics.

In the case of Statistics Canada, the population is actually the population of Canada -- the people who live here. However, for a different kind of statistic, the population might be all the students in a school, all the cars travelling on a specific highway on a given day, or all of the cans of tomato sauce on a grocery store shelf during a given week. 

The population will depend on the purpose of the data collection and statistical analysis. 

A population versus a sample.

A sample is a group selected from the population. A sample may be chosen to represent an entire population. However, a sample may also be chosen to only include certain specific members of that population.

A sample of recent immigrants was surveyed by StatCan to get information about experience of immigrating to Canada to try to improve the services provided to recent immigrants.

A business might produce eight products. In their business, these eight products are their population. They use sampling to check the products for quality (quality control).

A manufacturing plant might not test every product that rolls off the line.
They might just test a small sample.

Checking each item would take a very long time, cost them a lot of money, and not give them much better information than they get by sampling. If they have had recent problems with only one product, then for the few days after the problem is fixed, they might choose to target that product when they sample for quality control. After it has been verified that the problem has been truly fixed (the sample products are fine), they would go back to randomly sampling from all eight product groups. The type of sample would depend on the reason for the survey.

Statistics and business decision-making

There are many ways to collect the data that is used to generate statistical reports for businesses.

How does Statistics Canada get information about businesses?

• Surveys:
  -Statistics Canada collects information from businesses through short monthly surveys that are easy to complete and they try to keep them as short as possible.
  -Many companies agree to allow Statistics Canada to collect survey data electronically by extracting information directly from the company’s computer systems.
  -Some survey data comes from businesses completing an online questionnaire.
  -Some survey data comes from companies completing a paper questionnaire and sending it to Statistics Canada.
• Other sources:
  -Administrative data is information that government agencies and businesses have already collected. For businesses, this information will have already been filed with government, such as annual tax returns and monthly employee payroll records.

Connecting statistics and probability

Look one more time at this statement:

In 2012, 10% of jobs were in the manufacturing industry.

This tells us that if you were a worker in Ontario in 2012, there was 10% chance that you worked in the manufacturing industry.

Another way of saying that is that the probability that you were working in a manufacturing job in 2012 is 10%. Probability is the chance that something will happen, or how likely something is to happen. Statistics can tell us the probability of something happening.

Question

If the probability of a worker being in a manufacturing job is 10%, then the probability that they are NOT in a manufacturing job is:

1. 10%
2. 50%?
3. 90%?

Answer