Statistics 205 – Introductory Statistics Spring II 2022 PROJECT (40% OF FINAL GRADE) Goal: The goal of this project to collect, organize, describe, and analyze data to answer questions of your choice. This will allow you to apply the skills you learn in this course to the world around you which will in turn enhance your appreciation and retention of the material. Topics: You are free to choose your own questions. The questions may be related to your major or some other topic of interest. You should choose a topic so that it will be straightforward to gather the data. The easiest approach will be to design an experiment to compare two groups but the only rule is to make sure the topic is interesting! Be creative! The project will be done in 5 parts:
A. Determine the type of information you wish to collect. B. Conduct surveys to collect your data. C. Organize and summarize your results using MS Excel. D. Use statistical methods to draw conclusions. E. At the conclusion of your project, you will write a report and submit it to the instructor
presenting all your work and final results. This report must address all aspects of the project. The report will be submitted in PDF format, while all statistical analysis should be done in MS Excel.
Important Points: • Everything you turn in must be typed. There are no exceptions.
• The PDF report, the MS Excel calculations as well as all other electronic files should be
submitted through Moodle.
Part A: Planning and Preparing for your surveys
A1: Aims: Present the main goals of your study. Explain what the motivation is for collecting, organizing, summarizing and analyzing the data. Explain the purpose of the study in your own words, why you were interested in the question and what you expected to see from the data. Elaborate on possible uses of your results in the future. You may also make some hypotheses on what you expect the outcomes of the project will be. Keep in mind that you will have to review this section after you complete your project to evaluate whether your aims and goals have been met. A2: Population: Provide a brief description of the population of your study. Present some attributes and characteristics of the population, being careful to choose only those that are appropriate for study. For example, you have the option to discuss age, ethnic background, city of permanent residence, etc. but not all of these characteristics are relevant to your study. Since you don’t have access to exact data regarding your population, feel free to use rough estimates, making sure to provide some type of justification for your rationale. A3: Variables: Based on the goals and aims of the study, choose five attributes of your population that you wish to study, for the purposes of the project. Define clearly your variables, characterize them as quantitative (discrete or continuous) and qualitative (nominal vs ordinal). Be careful to choose variables of all types, that is at least two qualitative of which one should be binary (e.g. taking values 0 and 1), one discrete quantitative and one continuous quantitative. The fifth variable can be continuous or discrete quantitative. Justify clearly your choice of variables and describe the values of the variables (e.g. unit of measurement, categories). Remember that you are doing a quantitative survey, thus main focus of this project is the quantitative variables- so make sure that your research questions are closely linked to them. A4: Survey Methods: In this section you will have to make your decisions regarding how you plan to collect your data. Be specific on whether you will use physical or electronic surveys, when and where exactly your surveys will be conducted, how many people will work etc. Justify fully why you chose the method(s) you present here. A5: Sampling: Decide how many people you will ask and how you will choose your sample. You have many options, and your choice has to be careful, keeping in mind that there is no right answer. You can choose to survey the entire population – as it is relatively small – you can randomly choose a sample or pick one by one the subjects you will survey. In any case, you have to make sure your sample is diverse and representative of your population. Since the mathematical aspects of sampling have not been rigorously covered in the course, you can keep your justifications on a basic level. A6: Survey Drafts: Start designing your surveys. Since you have already decided on the survey type and your sampling methods, the only thing left to do is to the write-up of your surveys. Pick carefully the questions you wish to ask, making sure that your phrasing is both clear and simple. Think carefully about the possible answers to the questions you set, as these will turn out to be the data you will analyze. Take into account the fact that that you will eventually have to tabulate the results into Excel. Make sure that in the draft along with the questions you provide the formatting of the answers (e.g. multiple choice, open answer etc.)
Part B: Conducting your Surveys B1: Surveying: After your plan has been approved by your instructor, you will have to execute it. Make sure you follow your plan from part A as closely as possible. In case any issues come up and you have to slightly modify it, do not change your answers in Part A. Just make sure you clearly explain your changes and fully justify why you had to make them. B2: Tabulate your results: Insert your raw data in a blank Excel file, without editing or analyzing it. Label the sheet “Raw Data” as you will need to refer to it many times in the course of your project. Remember that your surveys need to be completely anonymous, so don’t include any names in Excel. Instead use an extra column for identification purposes, so that you know that this is the same person answering different questions, without actually knowing who they are. Use the exact phrasing of your questions to label the columns with the participants’ answers. B3: Describe the variables you collected: Include a description of your observational units, your variables and their measurement units. You may use a table for this. You should also specify research questions/aims and note whether you have made any changes compared to what you submitted in part A. Clearly define sample size. B4: Surveying Experience: Briefly discuss your experiences conducting the surveys. Were people willing to answer your questions? Did they think it was study that could come up with useful information? If you were to do this again, would you revise your plan or change your surveying strategy? Include specific comments and/or reactions of the students you polled. Part C: Organize and Summarize your Data C1: Create frequency distributions: Create four frequency distributions in MS Excel, one for every variable you study. Be careful to distinguish between categorical, grouped and ungrouped data. Include all columns necessary for your forthcoming analysis. C2: Charting: Use MS Excel to draw a variety of different charts and graphs for each variable. Make sure you choose the appropriate chart for your variables. You may choose to use one or more graphs in each case; try to find a balance between including all necessary information and overloading your presentation. Label your axes, title your graphs and use colors. Again you have to find a balance between making your charts aesthetically pleasing, easy to read and rigorous. C3: Descriptive Statistics: Compute all measures of central tendency and variation for your quantitative data. Prepare for exploratory data analysis, by computing the 5-number summary and check for outliers. Compute the correlation coefficient if applicable to your dataset. C4: Analysis: Write up an analysis of what your distributions, charts and measures tell you about the data. Do not forget to comment on distribution shapes and skewness, making sure you identify if a known probability distribution has come up. Interpret and discuss what you can learn from the data and graphs.
Part D: Analyze the Data and Draw Conclusions D1: Confidence Intervals: Construct 95% confidence intervals for all your variables. The confidence intervals could be for the population mean of quantitative variables and for the population proportion for qualitative variables. Justify and interpret fully your answers. D2: Hypothesis Testing: Formulate hypotheses based on your research questions or based on other studies found in the literature. Fully justify your choices for the values tested. For quantitative data, you would implement one-sample hypothesis testing about the population mean and a two-sample hypothesis testing to test differences between two groups mean. For qualitative data, you would implement a one-sample hypothesis testing about proportions. D3: Interpretation: What does it all mean? Use the above summaries to justify your interpretation. Back up your conclusions with interpretations of the graphical summaries as well from part C. Suggest reasons for what you’ve observed e.g., why do you think these groups are different? or not different? Part E: Final Report Prepare a project report in a PDF format. Remember to include a cover page, a table of contents, an introduction, your findings and a conclusion. Include any relevant tables, graphs or charts. You should be prepared to answer questions on any aspect of the project!
CHECKLIST FOR FINAL REPORTS Title & Table of Contents
I. Introduction: Explain the purpose of the study in your own words, why you were interested in the question and what you expected to see from the data.
II. Summary of data collection and data description (no such thing as “too much detail” in this section!)
III. Summarize and interpret the data (concise, well-labeled, easy to read)
IV. Statistical inference (with justification for procedures chosen)
V. Conclusion: Review of what analyses revealed and any potential problems with your study. Include recommendations based on your analyses, future questions for someone conducting a similar study in this area and/or discussion of what you could have done differently with your project to strengthen your conclusions.
Marking Scheme:
• PART A: 14 points in total
o A1: 4 points o A2: 2 points o A3: 2 points o A4: 2 points o A5: 2 points o A6: 2 points
• PART B: 12 points in total
o B1: 4 points o B2: 2 points o B3: 4 points o B4: 2 points
• PART C: 24 points in total
o C1: 6 points o C2: 6 points o C3: 6 points o C4: 6 points
• PART D: 30 points in total
o D1: 10 points o D2: 10 points o D3: 10 points
• PART E: 20 points in total
o Document Layout/Structure/Clarity/Presentation of Data: 5 points o Report Phrasing and Use of Language-Readability: 5 points o Correctness of Calculations and MS Excel work – Accuracy: 5 points o Overall Sophistication of Project- challenging goals-impressive technical
content-ambitious aims: 5 Points
