Savannah Ritz

Mr. Kiker
Period 2

Regression Project Report

You can find a regression in almost any variable you could look at today. And
whether that regression is negative, positive, quadratic, quartic, or exponential, they all
tell us something about our world. The regression I chose to look at was one between the
two variables: the percent of a country in poverty compared to their literacy rate. I
selected this regression out of pure curiosity for the topic. Recently I had read an article
about the countries in the world ranked with the best education systems. Many of the
high-ranking countries didnt surprise me, but some did, and it got me to wonder what
got those countries so high on the list. This led me to want to find a correlation between
countries with low poverty rates and high literacy rates. Looking at these variables is
extremely relevant to analyzing the education systems put into place in different parts of
the world. To some extent, it is a universal goal to have more educated people; and
finding the perfect education system could bring us quite a bit closer to that goal. Any
organization looking to reach that goal someday would find this data relevant.

120%

100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%
0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00% 60.00% 70.00% 80.00% 90.00%

Above is the data that I collected. The black line is the best-fit line according to the
parent function that I chose for this set of data. I tested several different types of functions
to see which one was closest to the data that I had found. The parent function that I found
to be most closely related to this regression is a quartic function, testing 77.4% similar.
The datas regression equation is:
y= -2.751x4 + 0.003x3 + -0.173x2 + 1.845x + 94.683
The slope is overall negative indicating that the higher the poverty rate of a
country, the lower its literacy rate will most likely be. The y-intercept is 94.683 and
further proves that when the literacy rates will be very high when the poverty rates are
very low. The r2 value for this regression is 0.774. This means that the quartic parent
function is 77.4% similar to this regression, and is very close to representing all the
variability of the data.

Using the regression equation, I am able to predict variables that arent in this set
of data points by inputting an x-value, a percent in poverty, and am given a y-value, the
approximate literacy rate. For example:
x

22

Apx. 89

75

Apx. 55

85

Apx. 20

Now that I have this information, its fair to wonder what anyone could do with it.
And even though it seems to be a pretty specific topic, there are also many people that
would be interested in data of this nature. There are hundreds of organizations that focus
on creating schools in impoverished countries. If they had information like this to help
them decide where it is more important to focus their education, they could help more
people in the long run.
In conclusion, there is in fact a correlation between literacy and poverty rates in a
given country. The countries with the higher poverty rates have lower literacy rates.
Understanding this not only brings us closer to how we can work towards solving this
problem and help impoverished countries, but it also further proves that regressions help
us to understand our world.

Works Cited:

Development Data. World Data Bank. The World Bank IBRD IDA. Web. 8 Sep. 2014.
<http://databank.worldbank.org/data/home.aspx>

Population Below Poverty Line. Country Comparison. Index Mundi. 1 Jan. 2012. Web.
8 Sep. 2014. <http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=69>

The World Factbook. Library. The Central Intelligence Agency. 15. Aug. 2014. Web. 8
Sep. 2014. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html>