Statistical Experiment Plan to investigate the ability to estimate 30 and 60 seconds.

Authors Avatar by nayeeman49googlemailcom (student)

I am interested in investigating the ability of teenager at estimating periods of time, and also seeing how the data of people estimating periods of time is spread out. I am doing this because I want to see if there is relationship between the estimate of periods of time. So if someone is good at estimating one period of time they are also good at estimating another similar period of time. Also I want to see how the data of people estimating time periods is spread out.

My hypotheses are:

Year 11 are better at estimating 60 seconds than year 7 s

The better you are at estimating 30 seconds the better you are at estimating 60 seconds

Year 11 data follows the normal distribution.

I want to investigate hypothesis one because I want to see if age has an effect on the ability to estimate. I believe this as elder students have had a longer education and due to this they generally have a better grasp at estimating time than year 7's who would, I believe would underestimate because they are younger and do not have a good grasp of estimating a second and have little or no relationships between their pieces of data as they fundamentally don’t understand how to estimate periods of time.

Year 11 are better at estimating 30 and 60 seconds than year 7 s

For hypothesis 1 I will collect all my data from Winston Churchill School as I can easily and quickly obtain data from the school. I will collect as much data as I can from year 11's and year 7's estimating 60 and 30 seconds and this will be my population. From my population I will take 2 separate stratified samples one for each year. I will make my samples represent gender into proportion so gender does not affect my analysis. For example if I wanted a sample size of 50 and there were 3 boys for every 2 girls in year 7 then in my sample I will choose 30 boys and 20 girls and merge this two data together to form my sample of year 7. From these two separate stratified samples, I will draw 2 comparative box plots. The reason I chose year 7’s and 11’s is because they have the biggest age gap so would show the most difference if age affects estimation.  

The data that I shall I collect will be primary as I will personally supervise the collection of data and will not allow bias to enter my data. I will set rules for accepting a person’s estimate. This is better than secondary as in secondary data I do not know how the data is collected and if biased data was allowed in the population. If bias data was allowed in the population then this would make the data corrupt and my experiment would be useless as my data cannot be used. When collecting my data I will note down the persons gender so I am able to take this in account when collecting my sample Furthermore my data that I am collecting is continuous because I am measuring time periods which can be more accurately measured, for example a second can be more accurately measure by using milliseconds also the gender of my data is discreet as it is either male or female.

To make sure that all my data in my population is trustworthy I will have a criterion to avoid bias. I will not allow any person to repeat the test and will record only one trial per person at this investigation to avoid bias. Furthermore I will not allow people who have seen others do the investigation to take part in the test as they can pre-prepare them for the estimation and I will reject their estimation. Moreover in the room that I will do the investigation I will make sure that no one is wearing a watch to be able to see the time and all wall clocks shall be taken down.

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I chose two stratified samples because stratified samples allows the gender to be represented fairly, taking proportion into account, so if there are double male then female my sample will have double females. So I shall do one stratified sample for Year 7 and one stratified sample for Year 11’s. My sample size shall be 50 people. I chose 50 because it is big enough to fairly represent the population but not too big that it is too time consuming to draw diagrams with.

To do a stratified sample I will split my population into two, one side for males ...

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