Math 1150 – Elementary Statistics
Final Project

For this assignment you will again develop and test a formal hypothesis using a statistical method appropriate to your research question.

For this project we will again be working through the scientific method:
Develop a research question
Construct a hypothesis
Design an experiment or study
Collect Data
Carry out a hypothesis test
Interpret the results

You are certainly welcome to design and administer a survey to collect you data for this Project BUT you can also use existing data from a database that was collected by someone else. That is just that much less you have to do. You are welcome to use ANY of the methods discussed in the course. These include not only t-tests and Z-tests for means and proportions but also Chi-Squared tests, ANOVA, and t-tests on regression parameters.

Remember that you may find data by collecting or measuring it yourself, or using data from a database collected by someone else. Be sure that you have enough data to draw meaningful inferences.

Here are some websites that contain raw data but you are welcome to use other sources of data such a sports or financial data.

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series http://usa.ipums.org/usa/
U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/
Carnegie Mellon Data and Story Library http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/DASL/
U.S. Geological Survey http://www.usgs.gov/
National Historical Geographic Information System https://www.nhgis.org/
Minnesota Population Center: https://www.pop.umn.edu/

Just as with each of the previous group projects, you will submit a word document that contains your writing as well as charts, graphs, tables, and statistical output that was created in other programs and copied and pasted into your word document. Use the APA Template posted in Moodle as a MS Word file type posted under the Final Project block for this project, it has all the headings and formatting done for you.

Here are some notes for this assignment specifically: I am NOT expecting you to do background research (ie. Literature Review) for this project, unless you really want to.

In your Purpose section you will develop a “testable” hypothesis in your “I hypothesize that…” statement. A “testable” hypothesis is something that can be measured and compared using formal hypothesis tests like t, Z, Chi-Squared, and ANOVA.

In your Design/Analysis section be sure to say what type of test you are planning to perform (t, Z, χ^2, or F).

In your Results section limit your descriptive statistics to only those that are relevant to the data needed to investigate the research questions you have chosen for this project as well as a statement of your hypothesis test in symbols and the statistical output from the software you used to conduct the hypothesis test.

So, In the Results section be sure to list the following for EACH category of data as well as the data as a whole. (In the football example you would provide the following for the offensive players and the defensive players as well as the team as a whole.)
Table of summary statistics including the following:
Mean (μ)
Standard Deviation (σ)
Mode (if it exists)
Five-Number-Summary: (Min, Q1, Median, Q3, Max)
Range (= Max – Min)
Interquartile Range (IQR = Q3-Q1)
Bounds for outliers: Lower Bound =μ-2.5σ
Upper Bound =μ+2.5σ
Histogram (also describe the shape of the distribution near your histogram)
Boxplot (including fences for outliers if needed, remember these are)
Lower Fence = Q1 – 1.5xIQR
Upper Fence = Q3 + 1.5xIQR
Outliers are marked as stars on the box plot.

Any other charts or graphs you think will be relevant and helpful to your argument.
Also in the Results section display the following:
You do NOT need to construct any 95% confidence intervals for this project, only a formal statement of your hypothesis test using mathematical symbols. An example it might look something like this:
H_0:μ_1=μ_2
H_1:μ_1≠μ_2
Use a significance level of α=.05 when carrying out your hypothesis tests.

Display the output from the statistical software you used to carry out your hypothesis test. Make sure this output includes the following:
Type of test (ie, t, F, Z, χ^2)
Degrees of Freedom (if necessary)
Value of the test statistic
P-value

NOTE: Be sure to label your tables and graphs as “Table 1” and “Figure 3” so they can be easily referred to in the Discussion section.

In the Discussion section remember that the first paragraph should be a summary of your findings from the results section in relation to your research question.
Are your results statistically significant? (This is the conclusion of your hypothesis test. Is your p-value less than 0.05, can you reject the null hypothesis?)
Are your results clinically significant? (This is your interpretation of the conclusion of your hypothesis test. What do those results mean in the context of your research question?)
One of the goals of this course is for you to use statistics as evidence in a larger argument and this is the section where you get to do that! In APA style, just like citing sources of information, you must cite the results of a statistical test. The following website has some excellent description about how to do this.
http://my.ilstu.edu/~jhkahn/apastats.html
Also address any outliers in your Discussion section. Do you have any outliers? If so, discuss them here. Are they plausible? How do they impact your results? Should they be left out?

The Scientific Writing Rubric will be used to evaluate your paper in final grading by the course instructor. All sections are appropriate!

Be sure to address all the following areas from the APA Template.

Title Page
Abstract
Introduction (An “Introduction” heading not used in an APA manuscript instead the Main Title from the title page is listed here again and centered. )
Literature Review (optional)
Purpose of Study
Methods
Participants
Design/Analysis
Procedure
Results (see instructions below for elaboration of the Results section)
Discussion (see instructions below for elaboration of the Discussion section)
Implication for Practice
References (if any, but not required for this assignment)
Appendix (if needed, i.e. Survey Instrument)