College in High School Statistics 200
Data Analysis Project
Project Outline
- Teachers should have their students complete our online
survey by accessing
the url I announced at the fall meeting. (If you need that url from me again,
just send an email with the request.)
On this website I make combined data
available to all CHS teachers and students; for now, we have data from
114 students from Hampton, Seneca, and Center High Schools'
CHS Stat 200
classes.
To download, left-click on chssurveyf03.txt.
The survey data will show up on the screen. Highlight all of it by
typing "Ctrl a" simultaneously and copy it all by typing "Ctrl c"
simultaneously. Then start up MINITAB, and right below the cell C1 (above
row 1) paste the data by typing "ctrl v" simultaneously. Click OK and the
data should be there. Caution! The data may not transfer correctly
if there are missing entries. Fill in blank cells with a zero, if appropriate;
otherwise, with an asterisk ("*").
- A series of 15 Problems
reflect skills learned throughout
the course, from displays and summaries at the beginning to statistical
inference at the end. Each problem requires students to focus on one or more
quantitative and/or qualitative variables of their choice. Most, but not all
(eg. inference about proportions) of the problems are much easier to tackle
using MINITAB.
- A handout on MINITAB Basics
which I put together for the Stat 200 course itself
also serves as a reference when students seek the right approach to one of the
extra credit problems.
An important part of each problem is for the students to consider first
what results, if any, they anticipate. Some are obvious---males will tend to
be taller than females---whereas others would be more thought-provoking:
Will there be a substantial relationship between ages of students and ages
of their mothers? Do students tend to ``randomly'' select certain numbers
more than others?
In some cases, students may simply state that they couldn't guess in advance
how things will turn out.
The other important step, after producing displays, output or calculations,
etc., is for students to summarize their findings. In performing this step,
some students demonstrate an impressive grasp of Stat 200 concepts. Others
may reveal misconceptions that can be rectified with feedback from the
teacher. For example, many of my students set up a confidence interval for
unknown population mean and conclude that the {\it sample mean} does fall in
that interval. (Of course it does!)
This project, and perhaps others that CHS teachers share with the group,
may also serve as an IEP project for gifted students interested in Statistics.
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