College in High School Statistics 200
Data Analysis Project

Project Outline

1. Teachers should have their students complete our online survey by accessing the url I announced at the fall meeting. (If you need that url from me again, just send an email with the request.) On this website I make combined data available to all CHS teachers and students; for now, we have data from 114 students from Hampton, Seneca, and Center High Schools' CHS Stat 200 classes. To download, left-click on chssurveyf03.txt. The survey data will show up on the screen. Highlight all of it by typing "Ctrl a" simultaneously and copy it all by typing "Ctrl c" simultaneously. Then start up MINITAB, and right below the cell C1 (above row 1) paste the data by typing "ctrl v" simultaneously. Click OK and the data should be there. Caution! The data may not transfer correctly if there are missing entries. Fill in blank cells with a zero, if appropriate; otherwise, with an asterisk ("*").
2. A series of 15 Problems reflect skills learned throughout the course, from displays and summaries at the beginning to statistical inference at the end. Each problem requires students to focus on one or more quantitative and/or qualitative variables of their choice. Most, but not all (eg. inference about proportions) of the problems are much easier to tackle using MINITAB.
3. A handout on MINITAB Basics which I put together for the Stat 200 course itself also serves as a reference when students seek the right approach to one of the extra credit problems.

An important part of each problem is for the students to consider first what results, if any, they anticipate. Some are obvious---males will tend to be taller than females---whereas others would be more thought-provoking: Will there be a substantial relationship between ages of students and ages of their mothers? Do students tend to ``randomly'' select certain numbers more than others? In some cases, students may simply state that they couldn't guess in advance how things will turn out.

The other important step, after producing displays, output or calculations, etc., is for students to summarize their findings. In performing this step, some students demonstrate an impressive grasp of Stat 200 concepts. Others may reveal misconceptions that can be rectified with feedback from the teacher. For example, many of my students set up a confidence interval for unknown population mean and conclude that the {\it sample mean} does fall in that interval. (Of course it does!)

This project, and perhaps others that CHS teachers share with the group, may also serve as an IEP project for gifted students interested in Statistics.

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