Women Who Smoke Are More Susceptible To Cancer Than Men

SCM 200

Project 2

Based on what we have learned in the class, the purpose of this project is to take a claim that someone has made (whether that is you or anything you have noticed in the world), form a hypothesis from that, collect data necessary to test this hypothesis, perform a hypothesis test and interpret the results.

This will be in a well-written paper and you will give an oral presentation to the class.

You can work in groups up to five people total including you.

This time there will be a deadline for a project proposal. Write me a proposal for what you want to do with your group. This will be due on April 4th. You can get ideas from reading online news, thinking about your passions in life, etc. I will also show you a sample project later on a week or two after.

Project proposal

This must be well thought out and we want to make sure you are collecting the right kinds of data.  Your proposal must be up to 2 paragraphs nicely written. Wait for approval from me before you start your project.

Your proposal should have a title, should be well organized, a list of your group members. One person can email it to me from each group. Explain your background of the project (why you find it interesting).  What is the claim being tested and where did you find your starting sources. Lately, there should be a timeline for the project. Do you guys intend to go out and collect data? Who is doing what? Have a plan in place.

These items should be in your proposal.

• A list of the group members with correct spellings of first and last names


• The title of the project


• An explanation of why you find the topic interesting


• The claim being tested and where you found it (cite your sources)


• An identification of the type of test/method: Average, One proportion, two proportions, Regression, ANOVA, two independent means, or paired means, etc. Nonparametric tests can be done on distributions that are not normal. (Do research on the topics not discussed yet and extra credit can be earned on things not learned)


• A timeline for completion of the project. Be sure to look at the calendar for when things are due, what else is going on in class, and plan accordingly.

Written report

This must be double spaced and printed. I want no more than 7 pages and at least 4 pages.  It should have an abstract (background/introduction) to the problem with the claim being tested, the context of the data, any problems with collecting the data.

Descriptive statistics, appropriate graphs and tables (basically what we did from Chapters 1-3)

Inferential statistics with a null and alternate hypothesis

Statistical output including a test statistics and p-value

Summary and final conclusions of the project

Suggestions for going beyond the project.

Oral presentation

This will be a 5 minute presentation with 2 minutes of Q&A, so a total of 7 minutes.

The powerpoint should at the minimum include an introduction of the topic, what kinds of data were collected, statistical methods used for the descriptive and inferential statistics, interesting trends you noticed, results, things your group did and what your group would like to do in the future to make this project even better.

Examples

• 65% of people think President Trump will very likely be able to improve economic conditions.  This is a claim about one proportion and the original claim could be written as p=0.65.


• Smokers are more likely to be male than female. Check if there are any national averages or proportions in a reputable source such as the NIH, New York Times, etc.


• Cats live five years longer than dogs. This is a claim about two averages and there are two groups, cats and dogs. The original claim here could be written as μ_w-μ_m=5 (the difference in the mean ages of cats and dogs is 5 years).


• The GPA of sophomores is lower than the GPA of freshmen. This is a two sample t test with a claim of μ_s<μ_f.

Tools:

Anything can be used. I highly recommend using R. One or two people in the group can be the technology experts and study R or whatever tools you would like to use. Someone else can be the idea person, someone can be the analytic person.

For the presentation, treat it as if you are presenting this to a client.

This will be due around April 18th.  Exact Date TBA