Mamie Fielder

Mr. Kiker
Pre-Cal
9/7/14
The Regression Project
For every one person in the United States, there are 5 people in
China. The most populous country in the entire world is China,
currently with the population of around 1.3 billion. That is around 19%,
or a little under one fifth, of the entire worlds population. Chinas
government noticed how rapidly their population was increasing, so in
1979, they made a one child policy, which states that each family is
only allowed to have one child. This created the growth rate of China to
decrease. I thought that finding out the growth rate from years 1940 to
2010 would be an interesting topic to research due to the growth rates
rising from 1940 to 1979, and then starting to decrease after that year.
This data might be useful to
demographists, which are
people who study the
growth and density of
populations and their vital
statistics.
The scatter plot to the
right shows the growth rate
of China since 1940. You
can see that in the years
around 1970 to 1980, the
growth rates started to
decrease, which is
explained from the one
child policy. Since the 70s
to 80s, the growth rate has declined.
These points on my graph best correlate with the quartic
function. Transformed to fit my data, my regression equation is
Y=1.174x 4 - .002x3 + .077x2 - .74x +8.132. Due to the different curves
in the graph, my equation does not have a slope. I found that the yintercept on the graph was 8.132. I found this by looking at the last
number that was added on my regression equation. This y intercept
tells me that at year 1939, the growth rate was 8.132 million. I noticed
that since year 1940 was plotted as 1, year 1939 would be 0 (or on the
Y axis).
An R2 value is a statistical term saying how good one term is at
predicting another. My R2 value was .4861637. This number is closer
to 0 than 1, which means that the correlation between my two
variables was around average. The plotted points would not be that

close to the line of best fit, so when making predictions of new

outcomes, the answer wont be perfectly accurate.
Within the range of my X values I obtained, I was able to make
three predictions of Y values. These predictions were (22, 14.7), (57,
11.1), and (0, 8.13). These predictions could work on my graph
because if they were plotted, their points would go in the general area
where most of the points were plotted.
After analyzing my data, I concluded that the growth rate of
China has been slowly decreasing since the one child policy was put
in place in 1979. Since the points on the graph do not go in any pattern
or order, the R2 value is low. This shows me that when predicting the
growth rate for future years, the numbers will not be exact. They will
be in the general area, but at the perfect point. This is important to not
only demographists, but also the entire Chinese population.
WORKS CITED:
Rosenberg, Matt. Chinas One Child Policy. October 8th, 2013. About
Education. September 10th, 2014.
http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/onechild.htm
Taborda, Joana. China GDP Growth Rate. August 16th, 2014. Trading
Economics. September 10th, 2014.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growth