The rise of atheism in America

In August of 2012, news outlets ranging from the Washington Post to the Huffington Post ran a story about the rise of atheism in America.

The source for the story was a poll that asked people, "Irrespective of whether you attend a place of worship or not, would you say you are a religious person, not a religious person or a convinced atheist?"

This type of question, which asks people to classify themselves in one way or another, is common in polling and generates categorical data.

In this lab you'll take a look at the atheism survey and explore what's at play when making inference about population proportions using categorical data.