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Introduction

Maths Coursework Data Handling: Used car prices Introduction The aim of the coursework is to find which factors will influence the price of a second hand car and in what way. I have been given a large list of cars from my teacher with many different factors about them. I believe that the price second hand cars are sold at is dependant upon several factors, certain factors will have a much larger effect on the price than others. I my investigation I am going to chose the 3 most popular manufacturers of cars from a tally chart of all of the cars because the thing that people look at first when they are buying a car is the make and I believe this is will affect the second hand price the most. Certain cars have a very good reputation of being reliable while others are not. Also some cars have a higher social status than others for example people would prefer a Porsche over a Ford. I will also investigate the price depreciation, age and mileage that has been done So the factors that I will investigate in my coursework are * Make or manufacturer * Mileage * Age I will not investigate any of the other factors because I think that they will not have a large impact on the second hand price of a car for example ...read more.

Middle

But there are two anomalous prices in the graph which have been highlighted these cars have a higher price than cars that have done roughly the same mileage, this could be explained because the cars have a lower age and are still relatively new. I have found that using the SHP of the car is not accurate because for example if a car originally start out at 50,000 pounds when new and then lost 5000 in one year to have 45,000 SHP and then a another car that was 10,000 when new lost 2000 pounds to become 8000 SHP you would think that the first car had a faster depreciation than the second price but if you use the formula PPL=(P-SHP)/P where PPL = Percent price lost, P= Price when new, SHP= second hand price you will see that the first car looses 10% of its value but the second car looses 20% of its value. Therefore it is important to use the PPL instead of the SHP because it is more accurate and more reliable. The graphs will be drawn again using the PPL instead of the SHP. Price when New - Second Hand Price Price when New Car OP SHP Percent price lost 1 16000 7999 50.01% 23 8785 1595 81.84% 33 7310 1050 85.64% 35 7875 1495 81.02% 43 8748 1995 77.19% 45 9105 2300 74.74% 52 ...read more.

Conclusion

The gradient for the Rover cars is 0.074 which is higher than the other 2 makes of car, this shows that the SHP of a car is varies on the make of the car. The Rover cars have a 17.66% standard deviation from the mean PPL which shows the price lost is more spread out than the other cars, for example there is one car that has a PPL of 23.20% and another that has a PPL of 87.65% this shows the results are very spread out Conclusion In conclusion given the time restraints that I have had I have been relatively successful in supporting my hypothesis. Given more time I could have investigated engine size because I think that is also an important factor. And I could have represented my data in different forms. In conclusion I have discovered that * There is positive correlation between the percentage price lost and the age of the car * There is positive correlation between the percentage price lost and the mileage * I have discovered that the cars lose the most value in the first 3 years (Ford, second hand price against age) * The make of the car affects the second hand price and the percentage price that is lost. ...read more.

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