Statistics

Discussion A #1 Data Visualization
Collect some data from your daily life, at least 30 points of data. It could be the number of emails you receive each day, your daily footsteps, minutes spent at the gym, calories consumed, commute time, time spent on the phone, body temperature, weather data – or come up with a survey question (“Do you like dogs?” “How many cousins do you have?” “What color is your car?”) and go ask some people! …the possibilities are endless.

Choose some visual way to display your data (you can use EXCEL or WORD) , and calculate descriptive statistics to describe the center of the data and its spread. Post your data set and your visualization as well as the descriptive statistics. Explain why you chose this particular visualization, and why you think it is effective. What pattern emerges, and what story does the picture tell? Also please explain why you chose the statistics you did to measure center and spread.

Discussion B #2 : Frequency Tables
Post (300+ words):

Think of some discrete random variable you observe on a regular basis. For example, it could be the (rounded) number of hours you sleep, how many gallons of gas are in your car when you get into it, how many boxes of cereal are in your house, how many days between grocery shopping, etc. (just make sure it takes only integer values). Try to list all of the possible values that this discrete random variable can take. If you can, collect some frequency data – give the relative frequency table and use this as an estimate of the probability distribution. Calculate the expected value and the standard deviation for this probability distribution. Interpret these parameters, and discuss whether they make sense based on your experience.