Elementary Statistics

Mid-Semester Writing Assignment

 

The objectives of this writing assignment are to be creative and use some statistics you learned during the first half of the semester.

 

Imagine that you are an alien from another galaxy visiting Earth as part of the study beyond the galaxy program.  Dr. Jay is also from the same galaxy but he has been teaching at PSU for a while.  Beyond the Galaxy Office of your home academy has sent you as a group to spend an earth year at PSU.  Even though you all come from the same galaxy, you have your own worlds and therefore cultural and other differences.

 

Only a few humans on Earth know about all of us.  You have been provided with a human body and identity.

 

Explore the world around you.  You have so many questions about this strange world.  You may have vacationed in other worlds in the universe but Earth and its inhabitants are different from anything you have seen before.  Upon return to your home world, you have an agreement to make a 60 minute presentation about your experience on Earth and 15 minutes out of the hour is about a specific question for which you found answers.

 

Find two questions for which you want answers.  You may get the approval of your instructor since some questions are sensitive to people on Earth.  Talk to 10 to 20 people and collect the data.

 

Write about:

  1. Who you are, where you came from, and what language you speak at home. (5 to 10 lines)
  2. Your curiosity about the questions. (5 to 10 lines)
  3. Data collection (5 to 10 lines)
  4. Data analysis (5 to 10 lines)  Attach your EXCEL printout to the paper.
  5. Your conclusions (5 to 10 lines)

 

Since you are not a native English speaker, please go to the Writing Center in the basement of Grubbs Hall and get your paper corrected.  Ask one of the staff to sign on your paper.

 

Submit both the original version of your paper and the one after corrections based on your Writing Center visit.  This paper should be typewritten.

 

Example:  Earthlings have strange attractions to animals, especially to cats and dogs.  You can study about the relationship between cats and people.  You can ask how many cats each person has.  Also, you can ask whether someone likes cats and collect data as an ordinal variable.