Math 123

Statistics Commute Time Project Cover Page

Name:_________________________
2. Mean: _____________ Median: ____________ Mode: ______________
St Dev: _____________ Section: _____________
Maximum: ____________ Minimum: _____________
Range: ________________ 25Percentile: _________ 90Percentile: _________
3. Your commute time z-score: ______________
Project Scores:
Solve the Problem ___________________
Degree of Sophistication ______________
Representation ______________________
Presentation ________________________

David Weist
MATH 123
T/R 10-11:50
Project 2
The time it took each person to commute varied drastically. Luckily my
commute everyday is a short one at six minutes. While some people were
commuting up to 45 minutes a day others were getting there in just a quick
5. After manipulating the different commute times, I was able to create
tables and charts that help you visually compare the differences in the
commute times recorded.
Before I went to work on the charts I first wanted to figure the average
time that these people spent commuting was. The upside to using excel in
this type of project is that you can run all of your formulas through it quickly
rather than working them out on a calculator or on paper. Not only does this
save time it also gives you a much more accurate calculation. The mean that
I calculated from the recorded times was 19.99 minutes. This doesnt seem
like a bad commute but it is technically four times longer than the shortest
commuter is used to while it is also less than half of what our longest
commuter accustoms to. This goes to show that the range of commute times
varies greatly at a forty minutes difference. I calculated this range by
subtracting our lowest commute time of 5 minutes from our longest
commute time of 45 minutes.

I was also able to calculate the median, mode, and standard deviation
using excel formulas such as =Mode(b2:b116), =Median(b2:b116), and
=StDev(b2:b116). The z-score is something that I took to pen and paper to
find though. I used my score of 6 minutes and subtracted the average
commute time of 19.99 minutes and finally divided it by the standard
deviation of 6.906. By doing this I was able to calculate my z-score which is
-2.2025 for a 6-minute commute. My z score tells my that I am getting to
class much faster than the average time recorded in the survey.
The last thing I did before moving onto the chart portion of this
assignment was find the 25th and 90th percentile of the range of numbers. I
used the percentile function on excel and typed in =Percentile(b2:b116,.9) to
find the 90th percentile and =Percentile(b2:b116,.25) to find the 25th
percentile. I was able to find that 25% of the commuters were reaching their
destination in 16 minutes or less while 90% of them were reaching their
destination in 29 minutes or less.
Now that I had figured out all of the information I needed to be able to
interpret the situation as well as possible I was able to move onto building a
chart. After reviewing all of the times I chose to use frequencies of 5 minutes.
I copied the recorded times into a frequency table and listed my preferred
frequencies in the column adjacent to it. After having the cells filled with the
information they needed to be I was able to highlight the cells I needed and
insert a chart that contained their values. By putting the values and

frequencies into a table with one another I was quickly able to pull all of the
values at once to make a chart rather than fill them in piece for piece.
As I reflect on this experience I noticed how much easier this
project was than the first. I think I am just much more comfortable using
excel and calculating things within it. I was able to learn things during this
project such as finding percentiles using the excel function and inserting
frequencies for a chart. These two projects have sparked my interest in using
excel and really have made a difference on how I can analyze a range of
statistics and create charts to display data. I believe excel will continue to be
of great help to me in the future because I would like to own a business and
excel would be a great spreadsheet to record company data on.