An Exhalent Problem for Teaching Statistics

Abstract

A dataset concerning the relationship between respiratory function (measured by forced expiratory volume, FEV) and smoking provides a powerful tool for investigating a wide variety of statistical matters. This paper gives a brief description of the problem, the data, and several issues and analyses suggested by the problem of quantifying the relationship between FEV and smoking.

• Forced expiratory volume
• Semester-long discussions
• Statistics education

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Bernard Rosner for allowing me to use and discuss this dataset and to the associate editor and reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.