A critical evaluation of an article - According to the article, "Causes of crime" by C.A. Ellwood, the causes of crime could be separated into two parts
A critical evaluation of an article According to the article, "Causes of crime" by C.A. Ellwood, the causes of crime could be separated into two parts: the physical environment and the social environment. He claimed that climate and season are the two factors of physical environment. The social environment included family background, economic conditions, environment, educational conditions, and social status. He gave the details and some examples for each cause, which were not valid because some of them were biased evidence and omit information, lack reference to sources, opinion and hearsay, and use of emotive and strong language. Firstly, the sentence that could be shown to be biased is that "among industrial classes the least crime was committed by agriculture classes while the most crime was committed by the unemployed" (Ellwood, 1924). Moreover, he cited another investigation, in which he also omitted information, that 40 percent of all misdemeanor arrested were the unemployed. But he didn't talk about the remaining, 60 percent. Another similar example is "the prison census of 1923 showed that 10.7 percent of the prisoners were illiterate". That means he only looked at this statistic from one side, not including other possible affecting factors, which could make readers see only the point as well. Secondly, he fails to give adequate reference to sources. He always
'Is a Premiership team's performance affected by the number of foreigners in the team'?
GCSE MATHS STATISTICS COURSEWORK 'Is a Premiership team's performance affected by the number of foreigners in the team'? By Jack Mariner Introduction- I am going to carry out an investigation into the amount of foreign players in the F.A Barclaycard Premiership. I shall look at the 20 Premiership clubs and research about their players and performances in the last two seasons (including this season 01/02). So I will be looking at seasons 2000 to 2001 and 2001 to 2002. After collecting and plotting the data on graphs and in tables, I will then analyse it to establish the bearing that foreigners do actually have on the teams' performances. The second part of the investigation is to establish the trend of the amount of foreign players in Premiership teams. To do this I will compare the amounts of foreigners in season01/01 and season 01/02 and then analyse the data via Spearman's Rank Correlation. I have chosen to investigate this topic because of my interest in football. I wanted to investigate something that I would enjoy doing and this appeared to be most appropriate. Another reason for choosing a football related piece was because the data could be easily attained from various sources. I will refer to the seasons as 2000/2001 and 2001/2002 because these are the years that the seasons start and end in. This season, for example, started in august 2001 and finishes in
Using Statistical Methods to Investigate the Seashore Habitat of Shellfish and Flora + Fauna
Statistics Coursework 2001 Using Statistical Methods to Investigate the Seashore Habitat of Shellfish and Flora + Fauna Introduction For my investigation I am going to visit the Northeast's seaside resort of Sunderland. The area of coastline that I will be analysing is called Whitburn Beach. Before fully deciding upon a hypotheses and task for our investigation, we had to build up ideas in the classroom. We decided that the investigation would be based on seaside habitat(s). From then we brainstormed all of the variables that would be applicable to this seaside investigation. We had to work out the best time to visit the seaside, because the tides would affect how long we could spend there. Hypotheses Whitburn Beach is an ideal location for my investigation because it is mostly compiled of rocky surfaces and rock pools that are prime habitats for limpets, periwinkles and seaweed. The four main variables that I will be investigating are: - (1) Number of limpets (2) Number of periwinkles (3) Heights of limpets (4) Percentage area of seaweed. From these variable I have decided upon using the hypotheses: - The limpets are larger with distance from the sea. Where there are large amounts of seaweed there will be many periwinkles. Where there are more periwinkles there will be fewer limpets. I used these hypotheses because they were the most relevant towards how much
Quality analysis for AllRepairs mechanics
Quality analysis for AllRepairs mechanics Executive summary The work efficiency and customers' satisfaction are very important aspects for the company's sustaining development. Through the research, we can explore some problems in the management process in time, and put forward some useful recommendations. On behalf of the DECS, we help the AllRepairs mechanics to investigate the working efficiency among workers with different experience and the customers' satisfaction with the repairing service. The results show that the workers with 10 years' experience always does the most effective and satisfactory jobs, although they spend more time to finish the jobs. And the overall customer satisfaction is 77.1%, which is slightly below the company's target. The dissatisfaction jobs mostly appear in the easy and standard jobs, and are always done by the workers with little working experience. The company should enhance the quality control toward the easy and the standard jobs, and manage to increase the working experience of the workers with little experience. Introduction In this report, firstly I give a brief description of the data set and dig some important information from it, then I analyze whether there are significant differences in the working efficiency between workers with different experiences, thirdly I measure whether the customer satisfaction reaches the goal of the
Do House Prices Affect Homelessness in London?
Do House Prices Affect Homelessness in London? By Beatrix Ferenczi Geographical Analysis and Techniques As part of Bsc Environmental Management School of Geography, Birkbeck College 2003 Contents Introduction Description and Source of Collected Data Variation in Data Null Hypothesis- Describing the Relationship- Strength of Correlation Meaning of the Results Conclusion References Introduction I set out to try to find a link between the price of housing and homelessness. It seemed a huge task and certainly proved to be a difficult issue to handle. Whether rising house prices have an effect on the number of homeless households is a very fascinating subject but collecting data and researching the subject took much longer than anticipated. However I was able to access such information. After much debating which areas to consider within the United Kingdom I focused on the 33 London Boroughs. Description and Source of Collected Data I used the most reliable sources possible, obtaining average house prices from HM Land Registry (http://www.landreg.gov.uk) where The Residential Property Price Report provides a detailed and authoritative insight into what is actually happening to average prices and sales volumes in the residential property market for England and Wales. The figures also incorporate average prices and number of sales within Greater London by
Why sociologists choose either quantitative or qualitative research method?
A) Why sociologists choose either quantitative or qualitative research method? Quantitative research method is data in statistical form, positivist sociologists tend to use this method. Quantitative research method can be a primary or a secondary research method depending on how it is used. It can be secondary data if the person doing the research uses materials that are already collected by organizations, government officials and individual people. Etc. it can also be referred to as primary data because the secondary data is collected and put together by someone. Sociologists feel that using quantitative method is a lot easier than qualitative because of the availability of information from various places, such as; the Internet, library, institution, etc are all easy to obtain. This is one of the main reasons why sociologists (researchers) use secondary data. Many sociologists are limited in what they can do because of the lack of funds given to them; however in that situation they are likely to choose quantitative research method because it is much cheaper. Sociologists choose quantitative research method because it allows you to test your hypothesis. Emile Durkheim (1897) was a positivist's sociologist who believes that showing a statistical data on a research is valid because it is a social fact. He used statistics to test his hypothesis, "Suicide is caused by lack of
"Does Peoples Estimation Of Time Improve With Age?"
Maths Project '03 Task The Question that I will be looking at is: "Does Peoples Estimation Of Time Improve With Age?" Variables * Age Statement Of Task As the task above states, I will be looking at how certain populations perceive time, in this case 30 seconds. For this project I will be looking at data from the age range 15-18. It would be appropriate for this mathematical project to get data from every person in every age range in the entire would but this is almost physically impossible and is certainly impractical for this project. Due to language barriers, the amount of time and money it would consume and also that some age ranges such as under the age of 7 would find it difficult. The reason I have chosen the age range 15-18 is mainly due to practical purposes, the data is easily obtainable due to the fact that I am studying at a college with hundreds of people in that age range. Although it would have been possible to include data from younger students at college, I decided to use age 15 as my lowest parameter since a certain degree of maturity was required in order to collect the data in a reliable way. I chose to study 18 year olds because will have had an extra 3 years of education and experience which should bring about a noticeable difference between the groups The children I will be studying will all have had very similar experiences with their education
The Usefulness of Questionnaires in Carrying out research.
The Usefulness of Questionnaires in Carrying out research Questionnaires are a set of written questions that are given to the respondent in the same order, so that the same information is collected and collated. There are several different types of questionnaires, like Structured interview questionnaires and Postal questionnaires, which can be used to evaluate people's opinions. Questionnaires can be very useful in carrying out research, because questionnaires use quantitative data. Quantitative data is mainly about numbers and statistics, and it also usually involves a lot of respondents. The advantages of quantitative data are, with facts, figures and numbers, you can see trends and patterns. This kind of data can be analysed using computers. You could also use large samples and surveys. Quantitative data is also useful in carrying out research, because it can be reanalysed, so sociologists can use it again, therefore it is also reliable. The most common type of questionnaire from which research is carried out, is the self-completion questionnaire given to people to fill in, usually in a work place or a school. Structured interview questionnaires are undertaken by trained researchers who guide respondents through the questions. This eliminates errors and misunderstandings. Postal questionnaires are mailed to respondents with a Stamped Addressed Envelope. This type of
What are the advantages and disadvantages of quantitative and qualitative methods in Psychology ?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of quantitative and qualitative methods in Psychology ? Quantification can be defined as the process of measuring on some numerical basis. That is whenever we count or categorise, we quantify (Coolican, 1990). Quantitative methods in Psychology are concerned with the measurement and analysis of psychological phenomena. Quantitative psychologists aim to develop and apply mathematical methods of summarising and analysing all kinds of data from various areas of psychology. For example, quantitative psychologists have helped biologists develop mathematical methods of precisely describing the ways in which brain waves change when alcohol is consumed (Bernstein et al, 1991) Qualitative methods involve emphasising meanings, experiences, descriptions and so on (Coolican, 1990). So whereas the data for quantitative research tends to be numerical or categorical, the data for qualitative research generally consists of descriptions whether verbal recorded interviews and conversations involving experimental subjects or a description of an observed phenomena. Examples of qualitative research include reports describing and interpreting the ways in which individuals face death and describing how a minority group dealt with assimilation into the majority culture (shaughnessy & Zechmeister, 1994). Psychological research on the whole is more
The aim of investigation is to see if there is a link between the Gross National Product (GNP), average BMI (Body Mass Index) and average Life Expectancy of a country. I have chosen to do this because it gives a good insight
Statistics Investigation Aim The aim of investigation is to see if there is a link between the Gross National Product (GNP), average BMI (Body Mass Index) and average Life Expectancy of a country. I have chosen to do this because it gives a good insight into how healthy people in a country are and how good their standard of living is. I have chosen the above factors to investigate because: * GNP measures the value of goods and services that the country's citizens produced regardless of their location. GNP is one measure of the economic condition of a country, under the assumption that a higher GNP leads to a higher quality of living, all other things being equal. It is the best indicator of a countries wealth. * BMI is a measure of body fat that is the ratio of the weight of the body in kilograms to the square of its height in meters. BMI is a better measure of health risk than actual weight in pounds. The medical terms, overweight and obesity, are based on BMI values. A BMI of between 25 and 30 is defined as overweight, and a BMI of 30 or more is considered obese. The higher your BMI, the greater the risk of developing a weight-related illness. It is best indicator of health as it shows average nutrition of a country. * Life expectancy is the average lifespan of a person taken at birth. It is helpful because it shows standard pf living and available health resources