Lesson plan
Top-coded
In econometrics and statistics, a top-coded data observation is one for which data points whose values are above an upper bound are censored. Survey data are often topcoded before release to the public to preserve the anonymity of respondents. For example, if a survey answer reported a respondent with self-identified wealth of $79 billion, it would not be anonymous because people would know there is a good chance the respondent was Bill Gates. Top-coding may be also applied to prevent possibly-erroneous outliers from being published. Bottom-coding is analogous, e.g. if amounts below zero are reported as zero. Top-coding occurs for data recorded in groups, e.g. if age ranges are reported in these groups: 0-20, 21-50, 50-99, 100-and-up. Here we only know how many people have ages above 100, not their distribution. Producers of survey data sometimes release the average of the censored amounts to help users impute unbiased estimates of the top group.
Article summary
In econometrics and statistics, a top-coded data observation is one for which data points whose values are above an upper bound are censored. Survey data are often topcoded before release to the public to preserve the anonymity of respondents. For example, if a survey answer reported a respondent with self-identified wealth of $79 billion, it would not be anonymous because people would know there is a good chance the respondent was Bill Gates. Top-coding may be also applied to prevent possibly-erroneous outliers from being published. Bottom-coding is analogous, e.g. if amounts below zero are reported as zero. Top-coding occurs for data recorded in groups, e.g. if age ranges are reported in these groups: 0-20, 21-50, 50-99, 100-and-up. Here we only know how many people have ages above 100, not their distribution. Producers of survey data sometimes release the average of the censored amounts to help users impute unbiased estimates of the top group.
Key claims
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.