Practice Test Geeks(CEA) Certified Economic Analyst Practice Test
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Data Analysis & Statistical Methods Flashcards

7 cards from real CEA practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.

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  1. Which of the following is an example of a non-parametric statistical test?

    Answer: Mann-Whitney U test

    The Mann-Whitney U test compares two independent groups without assuming normality, making it a non-parametric alternative to the independent-samples t-test.

  2. In regression analysis, the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) is used to:

    Answer: Quantify the degree of multicollinearity for each predictor

    VIF for each predictor indicates how much its estimated variance is inflated due to correlation with other predictors; VIF > 10 is commonly considered problematic.

  3. The Law of Large Numbers (LLN) guarantees that as the number of observations increases, the sample mean:

    Answer: Converges to the population mean in probability

    The LLN states that the sample mean converges in probability (weak LLN) or almost surely (strong LLN) to the true population mean as n → ∞.

  4. A spurious regression in time-series analysis is most likely to occur when:

    Answer: Both variables contain unit roots but are not cointegrated

    Regressing two independent non-stationary (unit-root) series on each other typically produces high R² and significant t-statistics even though no true relationship exists.

  5. In Bayesian statistics, the posterior distribution is proportional to:

    Answer: The prior distribution times the likelihood function

    Bayes' theorem states that the posterior is proportional to the likelihood times the prior, combining new evidence with prior beliefs.

  6. An economic analyst uses k-fold cross-validation primarily to:

    Answer: Estimate out-of-sample predictive performance using the available data

    K-fold cross-validation partitions data into k subsets, trains on k−1 folds and tests on the remaining fold repeatedly, yielding an unbiased estimate of model generalization error.

  7. The Chow test in econometrics is used to determine whether:

    Answer: A regression model has a structural break at a known point

    The Chow test compares regression coefficients estimated on two subsamples to detect if a structural change occurred at a specified breakpoint.