Using the data from Mayfield School I am going to construct an investigation to see whether the number of hours of television a student watches per week directly influences their IQ and exam results.

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Rachael Smith Maths Coursework, Mr Lavender

                                Maths Statistic Coursework

Using the data from Mayfield School I am going to construct an investigation to see whether the number of hours of television a student watches per week directly influences their IQ and exam results.

The data that I will be using

For my coursework investigation it will be necessary for me to gather information from the Mayfield spreadsheet provided. I will need to conduct random sampling because there is simply too much data for me to handle. I have decided to use every fifth piece of information; this will enable me to gather information fairly so I will get a variety of data from both classes and sexes. Sampling every fifth piece of data will also permit me to construct accurate graphs. The data that I will be using will be the IQ, exam results and information on how many hours of television the students watch. I will be using data derived from both year groups and sexes. If when I am working with the data I see a piece of information that looks incorrect to me, such as someone having an IQ of 200 I will delete that students data and use another person, this way I can make sure that my graphs are a accurate illustration if the effect that IQ has on intelligence for example.

Hypothesis.

I predict that the students who watch a lot of television will have lower IQ’s than those who find alternate means of entertainment. I predict this because I believe that watching television does not provide much stimulus for the brain in comparison to active entertainment and taking part in conversations. I also envisage that the students who watch limited hours of television will do better in their exams. I think this because unless the students are watching educational programs related to their work then they are using time in which they could be studying. I understand that students who do not watch much television are not automatically studying all the time, however I know from personal experience that the television can be an immense distraction when it comes to doing dreary homework or revision.

A Graph to show the IQ of a student in comparison to the hours of television they watch

To construct this graph I had to use the IQ of the students in comparison to the number of hours of television they watch. I chose to plot this data on a scatter graph because it allows me to insert a line of best fit, which illustrates clearly any trends in the data.

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Vital Statistics for Graph 1

Number of points, n:        74

Mean, x:                18.22

Mean, y:                101.3

Standard Deviation, x:        12.77

Standard Deviation, y:        9.97

y-on-x Regression Line:        y=0.04136x+100.5

Straight Line: y=0.04136x+100.5        

Analysis of Graph one

IQ of boys and girls in comparison to the hours of television they watch.

I constructed a graph using the sampled data, which I collected. It shows the IQ of boys and girls in both year 11 and 10 in comparison to the hours of television they watch per week. By inserting a line of best fit I was able to see that there was neither any ...

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