Left vs. Right Hand Dominance By: Allison Randall, Bryer Jeannotte, Dalton Cousin, Emily Dugan, Julia St. Louis

Purpose of Study Our goal was to see if there were more left handed people in VVS compared to the United States population. Hₒ: P=31, 681, 093 or 10% of US population H₁: P>10%

How we gathered our data We asked Mr. Brown if we could loiter and survey lunch going students. We decided to use a systematic stratified sampling method when conducting our survey. The students were already broken up into clusters by lunch periods, grade 9-12 and teachers, which gave us the option to use this multi-stage sampling method. We sampled 222 individuals and had an even amount of males and females.

Sample Questions Age:__________ Gender:_______ Grade:_________ Department(for teachers only)_________ What hand do you write with?_________ What hand do you throw a ball with?________ When putting your pants on, what leg do you put in first?___________ When brushing your teeth, what hand do you use?__________

Design Students were already broken into clusters 5th, 6th, 7th period lunches. Then afterschool we sampled teachers from every department.

Our Sample Male Female Right Left Teachers 19 35 3 12th Grade 18 31 5 16 30 2 10th Grade 27 45 9 9th Grade 55 7

Central Limit Theorem n(p)>5 222(.1)=22.2 22.2>5 n(q)>5 222(.9)=199.8 199.8>5

Calculations We found that 11.71% of students are left handed with a margin error of 3.9% with a confidence interval of .95 E= Zc √pq/n E=Zc √(.1)(.9)/222 E=1.96√(.1)(.9)/222 E=.039 +-4% 95% confidence

Calculations H0: Ρ= 10% H1: P>10% Z= p ̂-p/√(pq/n) Z= (.1171-.10)/√(.1)(.9)/222 Z= .8493 p(z>.8493) 1-p(z<.8493) 1-.7995 p=.2005 α=.05 p>α Do not reject H0 .8493

Teachers vs Students

Biases Some people were unable to identify which leg they put into their pants first, which could have led them to guess in order to provide an answer. Subjects were tested together which led to conferring their answers with each other. Subjects could have had preconceptions about giving a “correct” answer.

Modifications Allow test subjects to answer at home to note which leg they put into their pants first. Separate subjects so there would be no influence of friends. Trying to sample 7th and 8th grade Alter our sample so we would not get under coverage of people not going to lunch. Do more research on left and right hand dominance in order to create improved test questions. Do more research to see if males are more likely to be left hand dominate. 1. We should have tried a different approach maybe surveying every class and getting every student because we had under coverage with the people who work through lunch at library or go to teachers rooms or don't have lunch OR go to the senior lounge because we had very few seniors at the lunch room. 2. We should have obtained more teacher surveys so we could compare the teachers to students to question if older generations are more left handed then newer ones. 3. We also should have looked up population percentage of girls left handed and boys left handed because we found that more boys were left handed.

Conclusion There were more left hand dominance within males than females in VVS. VVS is not abnormal, and falls under the normal curve for left hand dominance. Overall sampling was easy and we were able to get the data we needed to do this project and want anything

Work Cited Population Clock. The United States Census Bureau, n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.      <http://www.census.gov/popclock/>. Weber, Belinda. "Being left-handed is not 'in the genes,' study shows." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 7 Oct. 2013. Web. 14 Jan. 2014. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/267047