Statistics Reflection

Statistics has taught me a lot about real life situations. Towards the beginning of school year we started with the basics and data collection. The real-life word problems that we did with data collection will help me while figuring out the “real world”. The topic in class that I found most interesting was the graphical displays unit, because I love learning about different types of graphs. One of the reasons I took statistics in the first place is because I knew it was a smart class to have under my belt, especially in preparation for college. I know that I want to do something with business, so taking statistics made perfect sense for me. As for other students, I think it is still a good class to take, especially for people planning to go to college.

 

Statistics has definitely been more difficult than I thought it would be. If I could go back in time to the beginning of the year, I would tell myself to take more thorough notes, and taking more time to truly understand the material. I definitely have grown as a learner this year, partially from stats, but also from other life experiences. For me personally, doing more activities rather than note-taking would make the class more engaging (but note-taking is also important). Overall, statistics has been a good class, and I know that it was smart for me to take it. 

Here is a picture to sum up this year in Stats:Screen Shot 2019-04-07 at 6.34.54 PM

I chose this picture because as previously stated, statistics has been a somewhat difficult class. But it’s okay, because in the end I have always gotten myself to understand it.

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A Spoonful of Marshmallows

Our event for Statistics Olympics was called a “Spoonful of Marshmallows”. Statistics Olympics was a series of group events, with the intentions of collecting data from how well people did on each event. The data was then converted into a five number summary, and can be shown on a histogram or stemplot/boxplot, to show the outcome of the data. For our event, students had to walk a distance of 27 feet, there and back, carrying a spoon in their mouth while balancing a marshmallow on top of it. We then measured how fast (in seconds) it took for them to complete the task. At the start of our project, we originally had students walk a distance of 15 feet and back, but when we realized that this was too easy, we changed the distance to 27 feet.

 

Five Number Summary:

Min- 10.7

Q1- 12.35

Med-15.3

Q3- 20.55

Max- 32.4

Standard Deviation- 6.09

Mean- 17.5

 

The five number summary better explains our data, because our data is skewed right. The mean of 17.5 is pulled towards the tail of the data, and median of 15.3 is in the middle. If the data was normally distributed, the mean and the median would roughly be the same. Also, the data would be symmetric rather than skewed to the right.

 

The normal empirical rule percentages are 68%, 95%, and 99.7%. Our percentages are 75.9%, 93%, and 100%. Our data is not normally distributed, because of the differences shown in percentages from the normal percentages.

 

Overall, I enjoyed doing this project. It was an easy project to understand, and it was fun to be able to do the other events that my classmates prepared. This project was a nice break from our normal statistics class, and it was nice to do something a little different. I learned that you can gather statistical data from more things than you think. Once you gather the statistical data, finding the five number summary, and mean and standard deviation, can show you a lot about the outcome of the data.
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About Me

Hi, my name is Grace, and I am currently a senior in high school.

I am the youngest of four girls, meaning that my poor father had to adapt to the “glorious” lifestyle of barbies, pigtails, and pink everything. Unfortunately no matter how much I begged my parents for a puppy basically my whole life, all that I got out of it was a trusty goldfish named Russell (UPDATE: sadly Russell has passed away on 2/21/19 RIP). I have always been such a girly girl, and because of that I have never played a single sport. Ever. I do not really watch a lot of TV shows, but when I do, my guilty-pleasure TV show will always be the Bachelor. 

I love everything that is fashion related, so I spend a lot of my time flipping through fashion magazines like Marie Claire and Harper’s Bazaar. Right now I have two jobs, and both of them happen to be at retail clothing boutiques.

When I am not going to school or working, I enjoy going on adventures with my friends, shopping for clothes that I do not always need, or chilling at home with my family.