Statistics Research Project Instructions
MATH 201/BUS 230
On April 4, 2017, Jordan Friedman wrote an article for US News and World Report. He provided the following data about the “average” online learner (retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/higher-education/online-education/articles/2017-04-04/us-news-data-the-average-online-bachelors-student):
You will investigate two of these claims over the course of this term, using your class as a sample. Each week different elements of the project will be submitted and graded by your instructor. Based on your calculations and the feedback from your instructor, you will submit a final write up in week 7 of all your findings.
Points and Due Dates (submissions are due at 11:59pm ET Monday at the end of the indicated week):
| Project Part | Due Date | Points |
| Part 1 – Data Collection (Week 1) | Week 1 | 10 |
| Part 2 – Descriptive Statistics (Week 3) | Week 3 | 25 |
| Part 3 – Confidence Intervals (Week 5) | Week 5 | 25 |
| Part 4 – Hypothesis Testing (Week 6) | Week 6 | 25 |
| Part 5 – Final Report (Week 7) | Week 7 | 75 |
A note on ethics of research in our class: As in any research study, it is important to protect the confidentiality of those who respond to a survey. For this reason, no names of survey respondents will be used, no data will be made public, and no findings will be published outside of our classroom. As this is a student class project where the student investigator gathers or analyzes information in a systematic manner primarily for the learning experience, it is not intended to contribute to generalizable knowledge and is not to be presented outside the class in which the research is being done nor published/disseminated (including publication on the Internet) in any way, nor presented, nor archived, nor compiled with similar research for later publishing or presentation.
(10 points) Part 1 – Data Collection (Week 1): This week you will submit an assignment in the week 1 folder. You will answer the following questions:
1. What was your age (in years) on the first day of our course?
2. What is your gender?
In addition, you will match the following terms from the study:
· Population
· Parameters
· Sample
· Statistics
Your instructor will compile the answers for the entire class and will send out an Excel sheet with all the data during week 2 so you can use the file in parts 2-5 of the project.
(25 points) Part 2 – Descriptive Statistics (Week 3): This week you will calculate descriptive statistics for the first question, age. Your instructor will send you the “data sheet” with all the class data at the end of Week 2. This sheet will also provide space for you to do the following descriptive statistics under the “week 3” tab:
You will submit the Excel sheet with the following information:
· Make a Frequency Distribution with 5 classes, also list the midpoints, relative frequency, and cumulative frequency
· Make a relative frequency ogive
· Make a frequency polygon
· Calculate the mean
· Calculate the median
· Calculate the standard deviation
· Calculate the Q1 and Q3 values
https://www.usnews.com/higher-education/online-education/articles/2017-04-04/us-news-data-the-average-online-bachelors-student
· Description of population, sample, and statistic for the study involving our class
· Statement of the claims in the article that were tested in this project
· Null and alternative hypothesis for both tests run for this project (in words)
· Paragraph 2 (address the claim about the mean):
· Summary of sample statistics (mean, median, quartiles)
· Confidence interval, along with interpretation of the confidence interval
· Description of hypothesis test (alpha, test statistic, p-value, conclusion, interpretation)
· Paragraph 3 (address the claim about the proportion):
· Summary of sample statistics (x, n, and p)
· Confidence interval, along with interpretation of the confidence interval
· Description of hypothesis test (alpha, test statistic, p-value, conclusion, interpretation)
