Question

A study finds that during blizzards, online sales are highly associated with the number of snow plows on the road; the more plows, the more online purchases. The director of an association of online merchants suggests that the organization should encourage municipalities to send out more plows whenever it snows because, he says, that will increase business. Comment on the directors conclusion from the answer below:A. The director is wrong. The lurking variable here is the severity of the blizzard. A more severe blizzard calls for more plows and keeps people at home, where they are more likely to make online purchases.B. The director is wrong. If more plows are sent out whenever it snows, the roads will be beter and people will leave their home to make purchases as opposed to staying home and increasing online sales.C. The director is correct. More plows keep people at home, where they are more likely to make online purchases.D. The director is wrong. The lurking variable here is teh temperature. A lower temperature leads to a more severe blissard, which calls for more plows and keeps people at hom, where they are more likely to make online purchases.

Answer 1

Answer:

a. The director is wrong: the lurking variable here is the severity of the blizzard. A more severe blizzard calls for more plows and keeps people at home, where they are more likely to make online purchases.

Explanation:

The director is correlating the number of snow plows on the road with the amount of online purchases - the correlation is high, but it doesn't mean that the increase on online purchases is caused by the number of snow plows on the road.

The question is: why would the number of snow plows on the road increase in the first place? Snow plows are sent out according to the amount of snow that has fallen, which means that the lurking variable that explains the increase in the number of snow plows and the amount of online purchases, is the severity of the blizzard in terms of how much snow has fallen. When the weather outside is too harsh or dangerous for people to go out, then it is most likely that they prefer online purchases. If the director were to analyze the correlation between the severity of the blizzard and the amount of online purchases, he would find a high correlation as well and in this case it would be the variable that actually explains the behavior of the consumers.

Remember that a lurking variable is the non-controlled variable that affects both the dependent and independent variables. In this case, there is nothing that the director can do about the severity of the blizzard besides perhaps increasing the stock whenever the severe blizzard season rolls around.