Internal assessment The project

Tips for projects  Choose a topic that you are interested in  Make sure that you can generate enough information or collect sufficient data to perform simple and sophisticated mathematical processes  Make sure that you show clearly all the data you have collected otherwise the moderator can not check the accuracy of your mathematics  If you are using a questionnaire, include this in your project

Tips for projects  Write a clear description of what you are going to do, how you are going to do it and which mathematical processes you will use  Give your project a title  Keep to your teacher’s deadlines  Set out your project systematically so that it reads well  Put data neatly in tables just before drawing graphs or performing other mathematical processes-the moderator should not have to hunt for your data

Tips for projects  Perform some simple mathematics before attempting the more sophisticated processes  Always check your calculations thoroughly and make sure that they are reasonable  If you are using the chi-squared test make sure that none of your expected values are less than 1 and that less than 20% are less than 5

Tips for projects  If you plot a scatter graph and see that there is no (linear)correlation or, if you calculate the correlation coefficient, r, and it is very small, there is no need to plot a line of best fit or calculate the regression line as these have little meaning in this case  Ensure that all processes that you use are relevant  Comment clearly and thoroughly on your findings and conclusions

Tips for projects  Write about the validity of the mathematical processes that you used and the results obtained- eg. did you collect sufficient data?, was your data biased?, if you used a questionnaire, were the questions answered honestly?, etc  The 2 nd mark for the validity criterion is quite hard to earn. It is not enough to say ‘I needed more data’  Propose further extensions or improvements to your project. If you recognise weaknesses too late, be honest and discuss them. Try to describe how you would overcome them given more time