By the end of the week, your team is to make both an oral and a written presentation of your project. I have given various guidelines in e-mail messages and will continue to advise you during the week. This handout shows how I "pace" my intro stat class during the semester to do a similar project.
--- Mary Parker
Sunday: Agree on the project. Begin on non-text quiz E here. (Third page)
By Tuesday: Complete non-text quiz E. This should include any revision of how you will collect the data.
By Thursday: Complete the data collection and begin the analysis. (It is OK to start thinking about and working on the analysis part before you complete the data collection.) Instructions for my class reports are on the last page. You need not follow these exactly if you have better ideas. Do incorporate the discussion of sampling, experimental design, and the inferential analysis in your report, since you already know that material.
By Saturday: Complete the project report.
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Math 1563 -- Parker's sections
Non-text quiz A: (Due date to be announced. First week.) Credit: up to 3 points
Example: I might want to measure the lengths of cats. The cases (also called individuals) are cats, and the variable is "length", in inches, measured to the nearest inch. Some questions which occur are (1) Should I include the tail? and (2) If I include the tail, do I measure to the tip of the fur or just to the tip of the tail without the fur? Other variables which might be interesting are "weight" and their "eye color".
Think of some variables which you might be interested in analyzing sometime.
Non-text quiz B: (Due date to be announced. Second week.) Credit: up to 3 points
Use this set of numbers: 4, 5, 8, 9, 9
If you are having trouble getting started with your calculator, read through these questions and your manual and try to answer them. If you have trouble with any of them, see me before the next class.
Non-text quiz C: (Due date to be announced. Start looking for the example immediately.) Credit: up to 6 points
In some newspaper, magazine, or some other book besides a statistics textbook, find an example of two-variable data that you are (at least mildly) interested in. Both variables must be quantitative variables (not categorical). (You might want to read pages 92-96 first.)
Non-text Quiz D: (Due date to be announced -- probably during Week 4) Credit: up to 9 points.
This is the first part of a project and should be done individually, although you may discuss it with each other as much as you wish. Later parts of the project should be done in groups of 2 or 3 people.
1. Formulating the question.
Think of a question of interest to you for which you could collect some data.
Examples:
a. What percentage of cars don't completely stop at the stop sign at the north corner of Waterston and Hartford?
b. In a blind tast test, do people prefer Classic Coke to Pepsi?
c. How accurately could we predict hat size from forearm length?
Write the question and explain how this question is of interest to you or someone. How might accurate knowledge about the answer change someone's actions?
2. Identifying relevant variable(s).
Explain what the variable(s) is and how you expect to measure it. Discuss any definitions needed. (Remember the example about the length of a cat -- does that include the tail or not?)
3. How would you collect useful data?
Is this a question for which you just go collect data or do you have to set up an experiment? (Example b above requires you to set up an experiment.) Explain how you could get a reasonable sample or set up a reasonable experiment. Describe the population in which you are interested and explain how this method of collecting data should get representative data from this population. I don't expect a sophisticated answer here. I am deliberately assigning this before we talk about sampling and experimental design in detail.
Non-text quiz E: (Due date to be announced. Approximately week 6.) Credit: up to 3 points each.
Form a group of 2 or 3 people and choose a question to investigate. The question can be one that one of the people has suggested already or a new one. Use the feedback provided on Non-text quiz D as a guide. Go through all the steps of Non-text quiz D on this question until you agree on them. (At this stage, you know more about sampling and experimental design than you knew before, so use that new knowledge as much as you can.) Then measure a few data points and revise your ideas of what you will do as needed.
As one paper from your whole group, turn in
Non-text quiz F: (Due date to be announced. Approximately Week 9.) Credit: Up to 9 points each.
Using the same group and question as in Non-text quiz E, turn in a project report with your tentative answer to the question you originally asked, and supporting information. (A handout describing this report is included here.) This supporting information is the data you collected (with a description of how you collected it), an analysis based on descriptive statistics and exploratory data analysis, and a discussion of the limitations of your study. Later in the semester we will study inferential statistical techniques, which are more appropriate for actually drawing conclusions based on data.
Non-text quiz G: (Due date to be announced. Approximately Week 14.) Credit: Up to 9 points.
This quiz must be written and turned in by individuals, rather than a group. However, you may work with others to analyze and discuss this. This will be a further analysis of the data in your project from Non-text Quiz F, but with inferential techniques applied and an analysis of whether your experimental or sampling design has given you data for which inferential statistics are appropriate.
Your report must be typed or written very neatly and readably. It should include: