Statistical coursework that uses data from 'Mayfield High School.'

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Hayley Lloyd-Henry 11R Maths Statistics Coursework

MAYFIELD HIGH SCHOOL

Introduction

I have chosen to do this statistical coursework that uses data from ‘Mayfield High School.’ Although this is a fictitious school, the data is based on a real school. As the data has been collected for me, it is called secondary data.

I believe that this coursework will allow me to illustrate my ability to handle data, use specific techniques and apply higher level statistical maths by being able to use a variety of methods in order to analyse and compare sets of data. During this project I will be examining the relationships between the attributes of the pupils of Mayfield High School. My aim is took produce a line of enquiry which has two or more statistics regarding the pupils which are related to each other.

This table shows how many boys and girls there are in each year group at Mayfield High.

The total Number of students at the school is 1200

Data is provided for each pupil in the following categories:

  • Name
  • Age
  • Year Group
  • IQ
  • Weight
  • Height
  • Hair colour
  • Eye colour
  • Shoe size
  • Distance from home to school
  • Usual method if travel to school
  • Number of Brothers or sisters
  • Key stage 2 & 3 results in English, Mathematics and Science

From the abovementioned, I need to pick several types of data to base my investigation on. However, I have decided to pick only two (at the maximum 3) pieces of data, as time is a limiting factor in this coursework. When deciding my data categories, there are a few things that I need to bear in mind. I need to use quantitative data, so I am able to apply all higher level statistical maths to my results. I also need to make sure that the data I choose are closely related, so I can analyse my results thoroughly.

There are several lines of enquiry at this point that I may wish to follow up. These are:

  • The relationship between IQ and Key stage 3 English results
  • The relationship between height and weight
  • The relationship between shoe size and height

 

Through basic observations of the people in my surroundings, I believe that there may be a strong relationship between a person’s height and weight, not only with people in general, but between separate genders. However, I also feel that age is an affecting factor, and intend to look into that later on in the coursework. I have made this decision based on the fact that each of these pieces of data is interrelated and they are continuous (quantitative).

As previously stated, my line of enquiry will be the relationship between height and weight (with the introduction of age). I predict that there are several hypothesis that are related to this investigation.

  • Boys will be taller than girls
  • As height increases, so does weight
  • Girls are heavier than boys
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However, you must also take into consideration that relationships will be different when genders are treated separately.

In order to collect the data, it would take too much time and energy to unnecessarily include every person from the whole school. Therefore, a type of sample is needed. I have decided to take a sample rather than use the whole of the population, as it is quicker to take samples than to collect information from the whole population. Because time is a limiting factor, sampling will help me very much. It is important to choose the sample without bias so ...

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