NAME: Televisions, Physicians, and Life Expectancy TYPE: Sample SIZE: 40 observations, 6 variables DESCRIPTIVE ABSTRACT: For each of the forty largest countries in the world (according to 1990 population figures), data are given for the country's life expectancy at birth, number of people per television set, and number of people per physician. SOURCE: _The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1993_ (1993), New York: Pharos Books. VARIABLE DESCRIPTIONS: Columns 1 - 15 Country 23 - 26 Life expectancy 29 - 33 People per television 36 - 40 People per physician 43 - 44 Female life expectancy 47 - 48 Male life expectancy Values are aligned and delimited by blanks. Missing values are denoted with *. SPECIAL NOTES: A country's life expectancy was calculated by averaging the life expectancies for females and males. In most cases the almanac listed the ratios of people per television and people per physician directly. In the few cases for which the almanac listed the raw numbers, the ratios were calculated from the population information. The only missing values are people per television in Tanzania and Zaire. STORY BEHIND THE DATA: These data were gathered from _The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1993_ to enable students to explore properties of association, correlation, and prediction in a context that is very easy to understand. Additional information about these data can be found in the "Datasets and Stories" article "Televisions, Physicians, and Life Expectancy" in the _Journal of Statistics Education_ (Rossman 1994). PEDAGOGICAL NOTES: These data provide a useful context for students to discover the fundamental principle that correlation does not imply causation. They also give students an opportunity to explore data transformations and to consider whether a causal connection is necessary for one variable to be a useful predictor of another. People per television is negatively associated with life expectancy, and the log transformation makes it a slightly better predictor of life expectancy than people per physician. SUBMITTED BY: Allan J. Rossman Dickinson College Department of Mathematics and Computer Science P.O. Box 1773 Carlisle, PA 17013 rossman@dickinson.edu