Technical Writing Assignment

STAT 206 Final Project / Technical Writing Assignment The Final Project Technical Writing Assignment is due Thursday, December 10, 2020 at Midnight. The Final Project and Technical Writing Assignment will take the place of your Final Exam. It is worth 20% of your grade. The project requires an analysis pertaining to a “real-life” problem (that you choose – Have Fun!) using methods learned in this course. This is a data collection and analysis project. It is not a research paper. Your analysis must be written in a final report. This is a detailed technical writing report that discusses the problem, statistical methods, and results. The text of the Technical Writing Assignment must be typed. Some neat, hand-written labels and/or numbers on figures are permitted. Remember: This is the same as an exam, individual work is required on the project. Project: Select a topic of interest to study, preferably something within your major. Determine a parameter of interest and a hypothesis. Determine how to set up an experiment to collect a random sample. Then collect data and analyze the results. This is NOT a research paper. You are to collect and analyze your data. You may use software, like Excel to analyze the data and create graphs. You should use descriptive and inferential statistics. Overview of Technical Paper Sections: Title: (2 points) Make sure that your Writing Assignment has an original descriptive title. Title and Abstract should be on the first page. Abstract: (8 points)This is a stand alone section. It is written to give the reader a brief synopsis of the experiment and some general findings. This is written for a person who is doing research on a topic possibly related to your experiment. Be sure to be specific, yet brief. Even though the abstract comes first in your paper, it is sometimes easier to write the abstract last. It is a summary of your paper, and is very difficult to write well without having written your paper. There will be some redundancy from other parts of the paper. In the abstract be sure to include:  The purpose of the experiment  A brief description of the data collection and analysis (exclude fine details which will be covered in your paper)  Your conclusion  Major results that supported those conclusions: the results of your hypothesis test (in language that anyone could understand) and a good interpretation of your confidence interval and other statistical analyses. Materials and Methods: (35 points) This section should include:  Description of experiment’s purpose (Hint: what were you trying to decide/prove?)  Description of how the data was collected. State the materials that were used.  Description of basic experiment – describe how the experiment was set-up Was randomization used? Was it a blind or non-blinded test? What measures were taken to reduce extraneous factors? How so?  Description of statistical analysis methods. Methods used could include: descriptive statistics, graphs, test for normality, hypothesis test, confidence interval. Elaborate on each method – do not just list them! Describe not only what methods were used but why they were used. Do NOT give any numbers here; just describe the analysis techniques that were performed. Someone who knows nothing of the experiment should be able to repeat the entire analysis based on your description.

Results: (20 points)In this section, Tables and Figures are presented with little interpretation. Use software to graph your data. Create small tables of the results. There should be a brief “road map” paragraph explaining to the reader what Tables and Figures are found in this section. Results section should include:  a table outlining the sample data results  an appropriate graph showing the results in easy to interpret format  a table with the results from your hypothesis test – this will include the p-value, test statistic, and decision.  a table with the lower and upper bounds of any confidence intervals  any other graphs or analyses. Note: A roadmap PARAGRAPH (not a list) is required to describe the tables and figures in the results section. This should appear at the beginning of the Results section. The roadmap paragraph consists of approximately one sentence per table explaining to the reader what information is contained in the following tables. Do NOT tell why the table is important – you have already covered this in the materials and methods section. Discussion:(20 points) In this section, make sure that you do the following:  Address the purpose of the experiment.  Discuss the sample descriptive statistics.  Discuss the results from hypothesis tests and confidence intervals. Interpret the results of the tests in such a way that a general reader would understand your findings. Make a connection between the different types of analysis such as hypothesis test and confidence interval.  Discuss the assumptions for each test.  Discuss any shortcomings of the experiment – should there have been additional steps in the protocol of the experiment to eliminate bias, etc.  Ideas for further experimentation: what could be done to change the experiment? Appendix:(10 points) Attach calculations for any analyses such as the hypothesis test, confidence interval and/or correlation. Neat handwriting may be used for the calculations. (This is a Statistics class – this section is to show your work. A computer printout is NOT sufficient.)