Math 210
Project 2

Writing Newspaper Article that Includes Inferential Statistics

The overall goal

In this project, you are expected to:
As an end result, you will write a newspaper (or magazine) article that includes descriptive and inferential statistics.  You are encouraged to do your project in groups of two or three, although this is not a requirement.

Some comments on your data

Collecting your own data is not easy.  It is best that you talk with your instructor before it is collected and explain your procedures. Try to collect data for something that really is of interest to you and would be important to someone.  This will not only make your project more fun to do, but it will probably result in a better and more impressive project.  Since you need to do some sort of inference, you must be working with sample data.  Your data can be collected through experiments or observational studies.  When doing so, look carefully for any bias in the way data are collected.  The inferential procedures that we have studied are based on the assumption that we are working with a simple random sample.  For this reason, great care must be observed in how the data is collected.  Some topic suggestions can be found at http://www.math.hope.edu/swanson/statlabs/topics.html.

If you are collecting data by asking people questions over the phone or in face-to-face interviews, let them know why you are collecting the data and what it is going to be used for.  Also make sure you are courteous and professional at all times.  If you are collecting data by sending out questionnaires you should also state why you are collecting the data and what it is going to be used for.  You should also make your questionnaire look nice and professional.

Displaying and describing your data

After collecting your data set, you should display and describe it using methods we looked at early in our course.  These include histograms, pie charts, scatterplots, frequency distributions, means, medians, range, and standard deviations.  It is also important to examine and discuss any outliers you might find.

Making inferences

Once you have collected and described your data, you need to perform some sort of inference to a population.  You can use confidence intervals or significance tests for a population mean or population proportion, (things that we have done already), or you can use some method that we have yet to do (these include ANOVA - comparing more than two means, a chi-squared test - comparing distributions or a two-way table, and inference on linear regression).  Whatever you do, make sure you describe what your results mean in such a way that it can be understood by the general public.

Making conclusions

By the end of the article, you should come to some sort of conclusion about a population.  Because of limited time and money, your results might have some problems.  If this is so, you may want to give reasons why your results might not be correct.  You should then describe ways in which your study could be improved, given sufficient time and money

Some specifics

Your newspaper article should include the following:
  1. A clear and complete description of your data set and how it was collected.
  2. A clear and complete description about the statistical methods you will be using.  Write this in such a way that it can be understood by the general public.
  3. At least one graph.
  4. At least one descriptive statistical measure.
  5. At least one method of statistical inference.
  6. Information from at least one source other than your data.  This could be a report on a study done that is similar to yours or it could be information related to your topic that will make your article more interesting. 
  7. References for all of your sources.
  8. Your data set (perhaps in an appendix).
You will be graded on the following:
  1. Appropriate and correct use of graph(s).  (Labels, titles, headings, etc. appropriate).
  2.  Accuracy of statistical methods (both descriptive and inferential).
  3. Clear and complete descriptions of the data and the methods used.
  4. Clarity of the explanations, i.e., understandable by general public.
  5. Use of correct grammar, spelling, and standard English.
  6. Correct and complete references for all sources. 
Your project is due by Friday, December 5