MayfieldHigh School Statistics Project.

Authors Avatar

Samuel .J. Verlander                                                                                                        Statistics Coursework                           2003

Mayfield High School Statistics Project

For this year 11 GCSE mathematics coursework, I was given statistics on all of the children in Mayfield high school from year 7 to 11. The title Mayfield high school is fictional, but the statistics are from a real school in America. The vast amount of data that I was provided with is:

As the above table shows, there are 1183 students in the school, from year 7 to year 11. In addition to this data, more has been provided on each of the students, such as:

1. Name

2. Age

3. Year Group

4. IQ

5. Weight

6. Height

7. Hair colour

8. Eye colour

9. Distance from home to school

10. Usual method of travel to school

11. Number of brothers or sisters

12. Key Stage 2 results in English mathematics and science

There is a total of 27 different sets of data. This data is provided on every student from years 7 to 11.

From this the total number of datum points can be taken by multiplying the total number of students (1183) by the number of different data types on each of the students (27) giving the sum 1183 x 27 = 31941 datum points.

This project is about statistics, so I will be using this area of mathematics and this information combined to produce a project on the statistical values of some of the lines of enquiry of this data.

There is far too much data to analyze it all; it would take too much time and effort. Therefore in this project a sample of the whole sum of students will have to be used.

A lot of consideration must be put into how the sample is chosen. It must be assured that the sample taken from the whole sum of data is likely to reflect it should the whole sum was to be used in the investigation.

There are two main factors to be considered when choosing a sample, these are:

  1. How big should the sample be?
  2. How should the items included in the sample be collected?

The size of the sample can be considered by use of common sense. The main factor that usually decides the size of a sample is the degree of accuracy needed. The larger the sample, the more accurate it will be. For example, a sample of two men would be ample if the average weight of men to the nearest ton is required. A much larger sample would be needed if the average weight to the nearest ten grams was needed.

Join now!

The items for the sample should be selected to be representative of known characteristics of the total items. For example, if there was twice as many boys than girls in Mayfair high school, the sample should also contain twice the amount of boys. If there are no known characteristics of the total, then the sample is to be chosen so that any one item is as likely to be picked as the other. This is called Random sampling.

Random sampling is the technique that I will be using in this investigation. Random sampling means that every member of the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay