this a positive or negative association? 2.172 The Happy Planet Index The websit
ID: 3252844 • Letter: T
Question
this a positive or negative association? 2.172 The Happy Planet Index The website TED.com offers free short presentations, called TED Talks, on a variety of interesting subjects. One of the talks is called "The Happy Planet Index," by Nic Marks 61 Marks comments that we regularly measure and report economic data on countries, such as Gross National Product, when we really ought to be measuring the well-being of the people in the countries. He calls this measure Happiness, with larger numbers indicating greater happiness, health, and well-being. In addition, he believes we ought to be measuring the ecological footprint, per capita, of the country, with larger numbers indicating greater use of resources (such as gas and electricity) and more damage to the planet. Figure 2.57 shows a scatterplot of these two quantitative variables. The data are given in Hap- pyPlanetIndex. (a) Does there appear to be a mostly positive or mostly negative association between these two variables? What does that mean for these two variables? (b) Describe the happiness and ecological footprint of a country in the bottom left of the graph. (c) Costa Rica has the highest Happiness index. Find it on the graph and estimate its ecological footprint score. (d) For ecological footprints between 0 and 6, does a larger ecological footprint tend to be asso- ciated with more happiness? What about for ecological between 6 and 10? Discuss in context. 60MExplanation / Answer
(a) The scatterplot shows mostly positive association between these two variables. It means that countries with high ecological footprint have high happiness index and countries with low ecological footprint have low happiness index.
(b) The bottom left of the scatterplot shows the countries with low ecological footprint and low happiness index
(c) Highest happiness index is shown at ecological footprint = 2.25 and happiness index = 8.5
(d) For ecological footprint between 0 and 6, there is a linear association between ecological footprint and happiness index. Thus, a larger ecological footprint tends to be assocated with more happiness.
For ecological footprint between 6 and 10, happiness is almost constant with increasing ecological footprint. Thus, Happiness is maximized at ecological footprint = 6, After that, any increase in ecological footprint will have lesser impact on the hapiness.
(e) The upper left of the scatterplot shows the countries with low ecological footprint and high happiness index.
(f) Sub-saharan African are mostly concentrated at bottom left of the scatterplot and shows these countries have low ecological footprint and low happiness index.
Western nations are mostly concentrated at upper right of the scatterplot and shows these countries have high ecological footprint and high happiness index.
(g) For countries in bottom left, (have low ecological footprint), more economic development and increase in per capita with efficient use of resources without increase in the ecological footprint to increase the hapiness index.
For countries in top right, (have high ecological footprint), more environment friendly steps to be taken to bring down the ecological footprint.
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.