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Stage 1: Formulating the problem of interest.
At this stage each team will formulate
their own problem of interest and submit a report to
describe the problem, the variables (question items) to
be used, the number of cases and how to select the cases
for their study. The report for this stage should be
submitted no later
than the fourth week into the semester. |
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Stage 2: Analyzing the data using numerical and
graphical techniques
The report for Stage 2 should include the report
from Stage 1 and a section
of Methods, a section of Results and a brief Conclusion. |
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Stage 3: Analyzing the data using inferential
statistical techniques to conduct adequate hypothesis
testing. Comparison and/or
correlation and modeling.
The final report should include |
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- Statement of the Problem
- Description of variables and how
data was selected for the study
- Methodology
- Results
- Discussion and conclusion
- References
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Smaller problems than the above project can be designed
for homework or small projects using this
data throughout the entire semester. Here are some
examples: |
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Questions for Key Concepts:
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1. |
Take a random sample of 100 students. Draw a
histogram and a box plot and obtain numerical
summaries
such as mean, median, standard deviation for high school
GPA and college GPA. Discuss
the variation and shape of the distributions of both GPA's.
Write a short paragraph to make a
comparison between
college GPA and high school GPA.
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2. |
Draw a side-by-side histogram and compute
numerical summaries and box plots of college
GPA for
male and female students using the 100 student
data used in (1). Compare the distributions and
averages between male and female students. |
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3. |
Draw a side-by-side bar chart and obtain a two-way
summary table for the "smoking"
variable (Q10) for male
and female students. Compare the frequency
distribution
of smoking between male and female
students.
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4. |
Conduct a Chi-square test to test if
there is a significant association between male and
female
students on the issue of "drinking" (Q11). |
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Similar types of questions can be
designed for comparing students experiences based on
other background information such as "full time" vs.
"part time", "belong to fraternity or sorority"
vs. "not
belong to". |
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