DMI: A Hypothesis

The Data Management Investigation is a significant part of the course, that brings together the skills learned in the first four units, and applies them to the investigation of a hypothesis of your choosing.

You are about to take part in the process that underpins the advancement of human knowledge. When we begin to suspect that, for example, smoking causes cancer, there is a long process of statistical investigation before we allow ourselves to make that statement as a fact.

This process involves careful planning. We must first decide on a clearly stated hypothesis. We must decide what data we need to collect in order to determine whether or not the hypothesis is supported. We must plan how we are going to collect the data in a way that results in our having a truly representative sample to work from, that is of sufficient size, and is free of bias.

We must think about what we are going to do with that data- how are we going to process it, and how will we interpret our findings?

The investigation is broken down into 4 parts- one will follow each of the first four units of the course. In total, the investigation is worth 8% of the final mark of the course.

DMI: A Hypothesis

We must start with a hypothesis. A hypothesis must be presented as a statement, not as a question. Your hypothesis should focus on a relationship between two variables. Both variables should be quantitative and preferably continuous.

You must also explain why you believe your hypothesis to be true.

DMI: A Plan

Now you have a hypothesis, you need to decide what data you need to collect, and how much of it.

Your hypothesis involves two variables. You should look to collect data on these variables, but also data on variables that might be related.

For example, if you pick the hypothesis above(People who are better at Math are better at estimating time), you should ask yourself what other factors might affect how good people are at estimating time. You might come up with the following;

• Age
• Gender
• Time of day
• Heart rate

You should therefore collect data for these variables too.

Your plan should state:

• What data you are going to collect
• For each variable, whether it is qualitative or quantitative, discrete or continuous, ordinal or nominal
• How much data you are going to collect(a rough estimate would be a minimum sample size of 40, but the more, the better)

***ASSIGNMENT:

Please include neat, complete solutions showing all the steps you used to get your final answer. Be sure your graphs are well labeled, and your curves each easily distinguished with colour coding if you have more than one curve on a grid.

The first part of your Data Management Investigation should contain your hypothesis with a justification, and your plan.