LostLetter dataset

Return Rates for "Lost" Letters

Return Rates for "Lost" Letters

Which "lost" letters will be returned by the public? data

Format

A data frame with 140 observations on the following 8 variables.

LocationWhere letter was "lost": DesMoines, GrinnellCampus, or GrinnellTown
AddressAddress on the letter: Confederacy or Peaceworks
Returned1=letter was returned or 0=letter was not returned
DesMoinesIndicator for letters left in Des Moines
GrinnellTownIndicator for letters left in the town of Grinnell
GrinellCampusIndicator for letters left on the Grinnell campus
PeaceworksIndicator for letters addressed to Iowa Peaceworks
ConfederacyIndicator for letters addressed to Friends of the Confederacy

Details

In 1999 Grinnell College students Laurelin Muir and Adam Gratch conducted an experiment for an introductory statistics class. They intentionally "lost" 140 letters in either the city of Des Moines, the town of Grinnell, or on the Grinnell College campus. Half of each sample were addressed to Friends of the Confederacy and the other half to Iowa Peaceworks. The students kept track of which letters were eventually returned.

Source

Student project at Grinnell College

  • Maintainer: Robin Lock
  • License: GPL-3
  • Last published: 2019-01-04

About the dataset

  • Number of rows: 140
  • Number of columns: 8
  • Class: data.frame

Column names and types

  • Location:factor
  • Address:factor
  • Returned:integer
  • DesMoines:integer
  • GrinnellTown:integer
  • GrinellCampus:integer
  • Peaceworks:integer
  • Confederacy:integer