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

Students are very 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 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 relationship between Wald and LM test statistics is also examined. Two related examples are given, one to be used for step by step instructional purposes and one to be given as an exercise to students.