Survival on the Titanic: Illustrating Wald and Lagrange Multiplier Tests for Proportions and Logits

Abstract

Students are interested in lecture examples and class exercises involving data connected to the maiden voyage and the sinking of the liner Titanic. Information on the passengers and their fate can be used to explore relationships between various tests for differences in survival rates between different groups of passengers. Among the concepts the authors examined are tests for differences of proportions using a normal distribution, a chi-square test for independence, a test for the equality of two logits, and a test for the significance of the coefficient of a binary variable in logit model. The authors examined the relationship between Wald and Lagrange Multiplier test statistics and give two related examples.