Mayfields data handling

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Mayfield’s high school: GCSE Mathematics

Introduction

In this coursework I will be investigating the contrast between girls and boys from years 11 and 7, in height and weight.  I am going to be using various methods to verify my hypothesis including producing graphs and diagrams.  I will be collecting my samples from Mayfield’s secondary school and will also be using stratified sampling to get accurate results from the samples.  I will then be putting the samples in to a series of graphs mainly scatter diagrams and cumulative frequency graphs as this will help me verify my hypothesis.

Hypothesis

In this investigation I predict that as the height of a pupil increases so     will the weights of the pupil.  I also think that as the males get older they will have a greater height and weight than the females.  But the females will have a greater height and weight than the males when they are younger; I feel this is due to the variations in puberty between males and females.      

Stratified sampling

The sampling method I am going to be using is stratified sampling.  This type of sampling involves calculations unlike random and quota sampling which do not use a stratified approach to sampling.  Stratified sampling will involve a number of calculations the first calculation is to find out the population of the sample you are working with.  The next step is then to find out the different attributes you are going to use for example and age and gender.  If you have used gender then you would have to find out the population of both females and males from the total population.  The next step once you have found the population of males and females would be to divide that population by the total population which would give a product which could then be divided by the number of samples you are working with; this will give you the stratified amount of samples you should work with. I am ideally looking to sample 30 people from each year group and I will use stratified sampling to find out how many boys and girls from each year to produce a fair investigation. I believe that 30 people from each year will give me a clear and fair indication of the trends in each year.

All calculations are rounded to one decimal place

Year 7

282 Pupils in year 7

130 Females

152 Males

130 female/ 282= 0.46 * 30 = 14 1dp

152 male/282=0.54 * 30= 16 1dp

Year 9

261 pupils in year 9

143 females

118 males

143 females/261= 0.55 * 30= 16 1dp

118 males/261= 0.45 * 30= 14 1dp

Year 11

170 pupils in year 11

86 females

84 males

86 females/ 170=0.5 * 30= 15 1dp

84 males/ 170=0.5 * 30= 15 1dp

Method

My number samples for each year was 30 as this is a round number of samples to analyse.  The first calculation I did was to find the total population of each year 7, 9 and 11.  First year seven, the total population was 282 pupils I then found how many males and females were in that year there were 130 females and a 152 males.  I then put this information into a calculation, first females I divided the total population (282) by 130 females which gave me a product of 0.46. Then to get the final amount of samples I was going to use for females I then multiplied my total amount of samples (30) by 0.46 which gave me a product of 13.8 which I rounded up to a whole number 14 females.  Then I calculated the amount of male samples I was going to use.  I used the same formula for finding the amount of female samples, first I divided the total population (282) by the population of males in year 7 (152) which gave me a product of 0.54.  Then I calculated the final amount of samples I would use, I multiplied the total amount of samples (30) by 0.54 which gave e a product of 16.2 which I then rounded to a whole number 16.

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Then I calculated the amount of samples I would use for year 9.  The total population of year 9 is 261 pupils I then found how many females and male, there were 143 females and 118 males.  This information I gathered was then put into a calculation to find out how many samples I would use for females and males.  First I found the amount of female samples I would use, I did this by dividing the total population of year 9 (261) by the amount of females (143) which gave me a product of 0.55.  I then multiplied the total ...

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