CHILD ABUSE, CHILDHOOD & HISTORY
4 star(s)
Which three factors affect the price of a second hand car.
Extracts from this document...
Introduction
Richard Price 10B
Used Car Prices:
Coursework
Aim
The aim of this project is to decide which three factors affect the price of a second hand car. I will choose the three factors, which I think, will influence the price the most out of several lines of enquiry.
Introduction
I plan to investigate what factors influence the price of a second hand car. To begin with I had to look at a database of 100 cars. This database gave me a lot of information about each car (e.g. age, air con, mileage etc). All these factors were my lines of enquiry. To choose my three factors I had to decide which three of the eighteen factors would affect the price the most.
Lines Of Enquiry
There are a few lines of enquiries, which could be possible factors in affecting a second hand cars price. To choose my three factors I put all the lines of enquiry into a list from most important (1) to least important (18)
- Mileage – This is my top factor because it tells you exactly how long the car has left in it. If the mileage is high it means the car has traveled far and may be in need of repair.
- Age – This tells you how long the
Middle
8
1.6
80
73%
43000
7
1.8
84
37%
21000
4
1.4
88
83%
49000
8
1
92
46%
50000
5
1.4
96
74%
57000
5
1.8
100
63%
52000
5
1.8
MEAN
67%
41108
6
2
After drawing up this table I highlighted the two columns I wanted to draw a graph for and drew an xy scatter graph. I drew on a line of best fit myself, because a simple point which is way above the others, for example the engine size of 4 on car number 56, would have sent the line of best too high when I know that it was just a one off.
Collecting Data For Stratified Sample (Method)
It is important to do a stratified sample because one car make might be less desirable for second hand car dealers than another and therefore have dropped its price dramatically. So to keep it fair I had to choose the right amount of each car. For this data I had to draw up a frequency table showing all of the car makes. Once I had did this I had to work out how to select the right amount of each model to make a fair test.
Car Model | Frequency | Amount Needed | Number picked |
Ford | 16 | 4 | 35,53,80,99 |
Vauxhall | 13 | 3 | 10,26,84 |
Rover | 12 | 3 | 19,32,75 |
Fiat | 10 | 3 | 24,34,55 |
Volkswagen | 7 | 2 | 30,79 |
Nissan | 6 | 2 | 20,58 |
Renault | 5 | 1 | 39 |
Peugeot | 5 | 1 | 67 |
Mercedes | 3 | 1 | 2 |
Citroen | 3 | 1 | 42 |
Daewoo | 3 | 1 | 50 |
BMW | 2 | 1 | 13 |
Mitsubishi | 2 | 1 | 17 |
Hyundai | 2 | 1 | 36 |
Rolls Royce | 1 | 0 | - |
Toyota | 1 | 0 | - |
Seat | 1 | 0 | - |
Lexus | 1 | 0 | - |
Bentley | 1 | 0 | - |
Honda | 1 | 0 | - |
Porsche | 1 | 0 | - |
Landrover | 1 | 0 | - |
Audi | 1 | 0 | - |
Suzuki | 1 | 0 | - |
Mazda | 1 | 0 | - |
To obtain the amount needed I had to take the number of cars in the database (100) and divide it by 4 to obtain the 25 which I wanted.
Conclusion
- People don’t buy a car just because of its insurance group, when selling a car you don’t think that just because it has a high insurance group you should drop the price a lot.
- The graph shows a correlation, however there are a lot of points well off the best fit line, this may suggest that this may be a coincidence.
Evaluation
This proves that the three factors I chose do affect the price of a second hand car. The order in which I put my top three lines of enquiry was also correct. So if you were selling a second hand car the age of the car the mileage it has done and the engine size will all drop the price of the car. To prove this was not just lucky I decided I would do one more graph against a factor, which I think will not affect the price and see if it has no correlation. I took the length of tax in months on the vehicle. The results I got confirmed that there was no correlation, which proves that age, mileage and engine size affect the price while the length of tax does not. However this investigation was done with only 25 cars to make a much more detailed conclusion I would of needed to take many more samples, to get the best result it would have been best to do it with all 100.
Page of
This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our AS and A Level Probability & Statistics section.
Found what you're looking for?
- Start learning 29% faster today
- 150,000+ documents available
- Just £6.99 a month
