Define the difference between observational and experimental

Define the difference between observational and experimental data. Find a semi-recent example of both types of data and include it with your answer. ii Smoke-Cola, \'the cola with nicotine c , has been supplying it\'s product in bottles to grocery stores and in cans to small \'bodega\' type convenience stores. The company is analyzing sales of its product to determine which type of packaging is preferred by its consumers. (a) Is this study observational or experimental? Explain your answer. (b) Outline a better method for determining whether a store will be supplied with cola in bottles or in cans so that future sales data will be more helpful in assessing the preferred type of packaging. (c) At the same time of this study Smoke-Cola has been running its \'Drink and Smoke\' contest where a number of its cola drinks include a cigarette (inside the bottle or can). Will this contest affect the outcome of the study and if so, how?

Solution

Observational data includes what has happened in past and what is happening now. But experimental data has other dimension alaongg with it as researcher manipulates the data to derive into conclusion by performing statistical analysis on it.

This study is observational as company is only \'observing\' the sales data to determine which packaging is preffered.

he company might include a research method by geographically stratifyting stores and then collecting a random sample of stores to conduct the experiment. In experiment a random sample of each of the two types of Smoke-Cola shoud be equally distributed and preferrence by customers should be recorded. Then 2 proportion sample test can be conduced to find out of which sample, who preffered Smoke-Cola in bottles and who preferred it in \'bodega\' type cans.

This contest seems to be ethically unfit, so i might affect the reputation of company.