Year 8 Statistics Project What Smartphone Do Year 8 Students Prefer?

We started a new unit in math, its about statics. We all have to choose one question which we have to answer. It has to be a question we could experiment or survey people about. For example my question was what smartphone do year 8 students prefer? Then once we find out our results we had to analyze and make a graph about them. This is my analysis:

Data Collection:
I am going to go to each class and ask people individually. Nalinee and I are working together because we have the same question. We think that it is better to survey everyone individually because that way the people are not limited to the options we give them; everybody can choose what phone they like for themselves.

Table: What smartphone do year 8 students prefer?

Phone Brand I-phone Blackberry Samsung Nokia HTC Sony Tally

IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII II IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII I I I

Frequency 64 12 19 6 1 1

Range: 64-1= 63 Mode: I- phone Mean: 64+12+19+6+1+1= 103, there are 6 types of phones, so we divide 103 by 6, which equal 17.2. So that means that 17 people would prefer each phone if they were all divided equally. I cannot do median because it doesnt really help me with my analysing and also my data is different so the median is not really relevant.

Graph:
This is a bar graph of the results we got:

What Smartphone Do Yr. 8 Students Prefer?

Sony HTC

Phone Brands

Nokia Samsung Blackberry I-phone 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Number of people
Looking at the results I can see clearly that I-phone was the most popular phone in year 8 and that Sony and HTC are the least popular. I think that the best average for my data would be the mode because I want to find out what is the most preferable phone in year 8. My range is 63 and since my type of data is different the range is telling us that there is one phone which is very popular and one phone which is not at all popular. The mean is telling us that if all phones had the same amount of people liking the phone then that amount of people would be 17 people liking each phone. I went around asking the people who chose I-phone, why they liked it and they said that it is really easy to use because of the touch screen and there are also many apps and music they can download. The percentage of people who prefer I phone in year 8 is 62%. I think that the bar graph was a good graph to use because it is very easy and clear to read. Also our question was pretty simple so this would be the perfect way to show what the favourite phone of year 8 was. I also used this graph because my data is discrete quantitative data and a bar graph is a good way to show discrete quantitative data. Another graph I could use is pie chart. Pie chart shows the percentage of something. Pie charts are not to show changes over time. That is also good for my data because my data is not about changes over time and about how many people like that type of phone. Pie chart would show that but instead of the number of people who like it, it would show the percentage of people who like it, and that would also show the most preferable phone just like a bar graph.

Some limitations I had was that there are around 120 people in year 8 but I got only 103 results so I dont have completely accurate data because I dont have the results for 17 people. Next time I do this survey I could make a list of names of all the people in year 8 and then see who I have surveyed and make sure I survey everybody. Another limitation I had was my survey was only for year 8 students. Next time I do this survey I could survey the whole secondary and see if the opinions are the same. The last limitation I had was that my data is kind of opinion based more than factual based, so next time I do the survey I could ask people what phone they have rather than what phone they like. My project is related to the ATL skill, research. During this project I had to go and survey the whole year 8 and ask them what phone they prefer. I also had to go again and ask people why the preferred it. So there was a lot of research involved during this research and that is why I think that this skill was used during this project. My evidence is my graph I made and the reasons why people like I- phone which was because it was touch screen and because there are many apps. Another ATL skill I used was organization because I had to organize all the data I gathered into this document, the evidence is this document. I think the way we collected data was pretty good. I think this because this way everyone could give their opinions for example we had a couple of people who chose phones like HTC which we would have never kept as an option ,and when we surveyed people individually we could get all the phones people liked instead of the phones we thought they liked. If I could do this project again I would ask the whole middle school and see if the opinions are the same. This way I have a wider range of results. Also next time when I went to each class I would keep a list and make sure that I really do survey everybody so that my data is accurate. Also next time when I asked people the question I would ask them what phone they have, not what phone they like. This way I would get more factual data rather than opinion based. Overall I am happy with the results we got and that we could answer my question, what smartphone do year 8 students prefer!