mayfield course work -boys are generally heavier than girl. This has to do with their body structure. Therefore I predict that my results will produce a pattern which shows that boys weight more than girls.

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Chioma Akunna                Mathematics Coursework: Statistics

11 Beatrice

Introduction

In this coursework I will be looking at various lines of enquiry based on data collected from Mayfield High School. Therefore I will be doing an investigation into the relationship between height, weight, body mass index and age of boys and girls at this school.

People’s height and weight are affected by their age and gender.

I assume that in year 7-9, more girls would be taller than boys. This is because girls tend to grow faster than boys at the early stages of development but boys eventually grow taller than them. Therefore in year 10-11, more boys would be taller than girls. This also applies to the adults aged 20 and above.

As for the weight, boys are generally heavier than girl. This has to do with their body structure. Therefore I predict that my results will produce a pattern which shows that boys weight more than girls. This pattern will be produced for all age groups: 7-9, 10-11 and 20+. The scatter diagram will have no correlation between age and BMI. This is because the data being used is non-continuous as age group 17-19 has been skipped in this investigation.

The histogram for year group 7-11 will show that most of the students will be underweight but more girls would be overweight than boys. As for the adults aged 20 and above, most of them will be overweight.

Method

There are 1183 students in Mayfield but I need to sample only 60 students. The population has been divided into strata according to their year group and gender too. Therefore I will use the stratified sampling method to randomly select in order to eliminate bias and at the same time ensure that the sample some is proportional to the size of the group in population as a whole. In most cases, the figures will be rounded up or down to the nearest integer.

Year 7

Boys = 151 x 60 = 7.6 → 8          Girls = 131 x 60 = 6.6 → 7

           1183                                     1183

Year 8

Boys = 145 x 60 = 7.3 → 7          Girls = 125 x 60 = 6.3 → 6

  1. 1183

Year 9

Boys = 118 x 60 = 5.9 → 6          Girls = 143 x 60 = 7.2 → 7

  1. 1183

Year 10

Boys = 106 x 60 = 5.3 → 5          Girls = 94 x 60 = 4.7 → 5

  1. 1183

Year 11

Boys = 84 x 60 = 4.2 → 4            Girls = 86 x 60 = 4.3 → 4 → 5

  1. 1183

I have to sample 5 girls instead of 4 girls from year 11. This is because I had a total of 59 instead of 60 which must have been because some figures were rounded up or down. Therefore, I had to increase one of the figures to ensure that it comes to a total of 60. This was done at random by writing “year 7 girls”, “year 7 boys” and so on, on a piece of paper and putting them in black bag. Without looking, I picked out one of the papers which read “year 11 girls”.

Raw data: this is information that has been collected but has not yet been organized in any way. The data is limited and as such will affect the results obtained. Age group 17 – 19 has been skipped which means that the data is non-continuous. This will show up on the scatter graph: it will have no correlation. At the same time, the primary and secondary data we have is likely to be anomalous. The adults interviewed could have made up their detail such as age and weight. Some of the details in the secondary data gotten from the school network could have been misprinted or miscalculated. All these can affect the limitation of data.

The Secondary Data was gotten of the school network and I randomly selected 60 students using my calculator.  Below is a table of year 7 -9 and 10 -11 secondary data I will be using in this investigation.

Primary Data: I had to collect 20 adults information: 10 male and 10 female, aged over 20. I did this in form of an interview by making a call and in person. I collected each person’s age in years and months, their height and weight. I then calculated their body mass index. Below is a table showing all the information.

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PIE CHART:  The pie charts will be used to show the relationship between height and age group. The result will then compared between boys and girls of the different age groups.

11 – 14 years:                              Male                                                 ...

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