Predicting total amount of PCB using transformed variables. Because distributions of variables such as PCB, the PCB congeners, and TEQ tend to be skewed, researchers frequently analyze the logarithms of the measured variables. Create a data set that has the logs of each of the variables in the PCB data set. Note that zero is a possible value for PCB126; most software packages will eliminate these cases when you request a log transformation.

(a) If you do not do anything about the 16 zero values of PCB126, what does your software do with these cases? Is there an error message of some kind?

(b) If you attempt to run a regression to predict the log of PCB using the log of PCB126 and the log of PCB52, are the cases with the zero values of PCB126 eliminated? Do you think that is a good way to handle this situation?

(c) The smallest nonzero value of PCB126 is 0.0052. One common practice when taking logarithms of measured values is to replace the zeros by one-half of the smallest observed value. Create a logarithm data set using this procedure; that is, replace the 16 zero values of PCB126 by 0.0026 before taking logarithms. Use numerical and graphical summaries to describe the distributions of the log variables.