PROJECT DRIVEN STATISTICS COURSE Anne Landry Florida State College at Jacksonville

DISCLAIMERS!!!  I’m not a statistician  I’m not a mathematician  I AM a mathematics educator

AUDIENCE Non-majors Nursing Criminal Justice Business Pharmacy Adult evening students

TEXTBOOK Elementary Statistics M.F. Triola TECHNOLOGY TI-83/84

MOTIVATION Enhance our definition of statistics Gather Organize Display Analyze and interpret Make predictions Draw inferences

HOMEWORK #1 Choose ONE of the questions below Ask that question to at least 30 people in the population that is suggested by the question. Use this data to respond to the questions on the back of this page. Ask college students in your classes: How many college credits have you completed? How many contacts are in the contact list on your phone? How many texts or tweets do you send a day? How many years have you lived in Jacksonville? Ask people at your place of work: How many miles to you commute daily to your job (either one way or round trip)? How many years have you been at this job?

Ask people at your gym: How many minutes of cardio do you do a week? How many miles do you run every week? Ask people in your military unit: How many years have you been active military? How many different duty locations have you been in? Ask a golfer: How many holes of golf do you play a month? What is your handicap? What is the length of your longest drive? More questions…

ASSIGNMENT 1. Clearly state the question that you asked. 2. Clearly identify the population you are targeting. 3. Clearly identify the sample that you gathered. 4. Show a complete list of your data. 5. Construct a frequency distribution. Use 5 classes. a. What is the class width? b. What are the class limits? c. What are the class boundaries? d. What are the class midpoints? 6. Prepare a relative frequency distribution. 7. Construct a histogram.

HOMEWORK #2 Use your personal data from Homework #1. 1. a. Use your raw data to find the mean, median, mode, midrange, standard deviation, and range. b. Use your frequency distribution to find the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation. c. Compare your answers. Explain what may be causing any differences. 2. a. What is the 5 number summary of your data? b. Use the 5 number summary to draw a box and whisker plot. c. Analyze your plot to identify skewness. 3. Compute Pearson’s Index of Skewness.  What does this say about the shape of your data?  How doe this compare to the shape of your histogram?  How does this compare to your box and whisker plot?

4. Identifying outliers. a. Find the interquartile range. b. Multiply by 1.5. c. Find upper and lowers bounds. d. Identify any outliers. 5. Find the trimmed mean. a. Trim the highest and lowest 10% of the data. b. Compute the trimmed mean. c. Compare to the raw mean. Compare the medians. d. Comment. e. What property of the mean does the trimmed mean attempt to compensate for?

HOMEWORK #3 Use the relative frequency distribution from Homework #1. 1. Use the relative frequency distribution to create a probability distribution. a. X=1 corresponds to Class 1: X=2 corresponds to Class 2: etc. b. P(X) corresponds to relative frequency for each X c. Confirm that your distribution satisfies the conditions of a probability distribution. Be thorough and specific. d. Find the mean and standard deviation of your distribution. e. Show a graph of your distribution. f. Compare this graph with your original histogram.

2. Use your probability distribution to answer the following: a. What is the probability that one randomly selected person chosen from your population falls in either Class 1 or Class 2. b. What is the probability that two randomly selected people chosen from your population both fall in Class 3. c. What is the probability that with three randomly selected people chosen from your population none fall in Class 2. d. What is the probability that with three randomly selected people chosen from your population at least 1 falls in Class 2. e. Using the definitions in your text, determine which, if any, of the events described above in 2 a. – d. are considered “unusual”.

HOMEWORK #4 For the purposes of this assignment, assume that all populations are essentially normally distributed. 1. Restate in clear language the population you are targeting. Clearly identify the sample you selected. 2. Construct a 95% confidence interval for the mean of your population using your sample data. 3. Recall that I had one of the other students in the class estimate the mean of your population. Use that estimate to answer the following: a. Clearly state the claim about the mean in words. b. Test the claim at the 95% confidence level. 4. Use your confident interval to test the claim about your population mean. Confirm that this decision agrees with your tested claim.

FINAL SUMMARY You have been hired by a company to do some statistical research. You are chief statistician in charge. Compile the information you have from your four homework assignments. Organize it into a seamless document. Prepare a report for the Board of Directors. Make the report in language that does not require a degree in statistics – do the interpretation for the board members.

This will be posted on the conference website as well