Belle Vorada SOCATIYANURAK 8C Y8 Statistics Assessment

In Year 8, which gender is faster in answering multiplication questions?

INTRODUCTION This is an assessment that we had to do in the Unit Statistics. Every individual or group, in year 8, had to come up with a research question and create a way to collect data. The objective of this project is to collect data and answer our research question, which is, In Year 8, which gender is faster in answering multiplication questions? In this report, I would like to inform you about our research and results from the experiment. RESEARCH QUESTION In Year 8, which gender is faster in answering multiplication questions? HYPOTHESIS I believe that girls would be faster because girls are more mature and focus on doing work, which means that girls would pay more attention. As far as I know most of the girls get better grades than boys, this may be because boys are more secretive with their grades. Another thing that may support my hypothesis is that girls that are less than 15 years old are more mature than most boys, since the people that I conducted my experiment on were either 12 or 13 years old. The girls were a lot more focused in completing the task while the boys were talking to their friends or saying that they give up on the task. REFERENCE TO AOI SKILLS The AOI skill that I used in this assessment is Approaches to Learning. This is because our research question is connected to learning maths and the ability of someone to be right and also fast in answering multiplication questions. DATA COLLECTION I decided to have an experiment to collect the data and we settled on making the data a sample of year 8 from 2 classes, 8C and 8E. In this project we would be collecting data by timing every girl and boy from both of the classes when they do the activity using Detention Dash in studymaths.co.uk. I had collected data from everyone in 8C including myself and my partner, but we didnt finish doing the experiment with everyone in 8E. After that we would find the average of both gender and then determine who were faster, boys or girls. Below is an example of what the students had to do:

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Belle Vorada SOCATIYANURAK 8C

These are two sets of frequency data, the girls and the boys results, that I use to organise the data that I had collected. This is to calculate the mean, median, mode and range.

Girls Frequency Distribution Table

Girls time in minutes 1 g 3 3<g 5 5<g 7 7<g 9 Frequency (f) 12 3 1 1 Midpoint (m) 2 4 6 8 Frequency x Midpoint 24 12 6 8

= 17

=50

Mean =

=2.94

Median = to find the median I must divide the f with two, for instance I divide 17 by 2. This equals 8.5. So we round it up so that it is the ninth person. The 9th persons time is in between 1 to 3 minutes, so the midpoint is 2. Mode = the most frequent time is around 1 to 3 minutes.

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Belle Vorada SOCATIYANURAK 8C Here is the graph for the girls time.

Boys Frequency Distribution Table

Boys time in minutes 1 g 3 3<g 5 5<g 7 7<g 9 9 < g 11 11 < g 13 Frequency (f) 9 9 0 1 0 1 =20 Midpoint (m) 2 4 6 8 10 12 Frequency x Midpoint 18 36 0 8 0 12 m=74

Mean =

= 3.7

Median= the frequency sum is even so it means that there must be 2 middle numbers. It is the 10th and the 11th number. When I plus the frequency of the 1 g 3 minutes and the 3 < g 5minutes, I get 18. So it means that the median time is 3-5 minutes. The midpoint is 4. Mode = the mode is between the 1 to 5 minutes.

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Belle Vorada SOCATIYANURAK 8C Here is the graph for the boys time.

Here is the summarised data. Mean 2.94 minutes 3.7 minutes Median 1-3 minutes 3-5 minutes Mode 1-3 minutes 1-5 minutes

Girls Boys

This shows that girls are faster because the girls mean and median are faster than the boys. The boys mode isnt clear or relevant because it is a wide range, so we cannot say who is faster in the mode. However, over all the girls are faster. Because the range is in groups, it is not possible to figure out. This is a graph to compare both of the genders time.

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Belle Vorada SOCATIYANURAK 8C

This graph tells us that most of the girls are in the 1-3 minutes while there are some who take 7 to 9 minutes. However there are no girls who are in the 9-13 minutes whilst there is 1 boy who takes 11 to 13 minutes to complete the task. This outlier may affect the calculations such as the mean. EXPLANATIONS I think that the method that we collected data wasnt that successful because it took a long time to do to collect data and for each person to finish the task. We were supposed to collect data so that there are about 70 people who took it but for us there wasnt enough data. Overall we only surveyed 37 people and it took quite a lot of time, it wasnt even close to what we were supposed to do but at least it was more than halfway. The graph that I had chosen is a column graph, it was the most useful because we could also compare the scores and it was clear and easy to understand without having to look at two graphs. It is a histogram. If we used a pie chart it would be hard to understand because we have to look back and forth between the two graphs and it wouldnt be clear. I think that a graph that I could possibly use can be the bar graph, it would probably have the same qualities but it would just be sideways. I think that the mean is probably the most useful because the mean for both boys and girls are a specific number, even though it may not be an integer. I chose mean because the other central tendencies are not specific and were in the range or in between numbers. Another thing is that our mean is actually in minutes so if it has decimal points it means that they are the seconds. This is very suitable for this project because part of this assessment for us, is to find the time and the seconds made it clearer. The limitations that we had to be there and supervise when someone is doing our experiment, this slowed our time because the students doing the task may not be principled with doing this task. Another limitation is that some people, mostly were boys, gave up on the task and then just run away. This also wasted our time because we had to get them back to finish it but then they wouldnt do it, so lastly, we had to find another person that agreed to do it. Lastly, we were only allowed to survey/experiment only 2 classes, 8C and 8E.We had a big amount of time but we wasted it by collecting data that sometimes was successful however, sometimes we were not. I believe that we could have collected data by sending out an email saying the direction and telling them not to cheat. I am sure that it would be a lot faster but many people wouldnt be principled and that we lead us to getting wrong data since it is not exactly what the real time is. CONCLUSION To conclude, by looking at the results that we collected, girls were faster than boys in answering multiplication questions. This verifies that my hypothesis is correct and that year 8 girls were faster and also correct in answering mathematical questions. If I could do this project again, I would improve on how we collect data because that would probably be the most important stage in this assessment, we would improve our experiment so that it is not that long to do so that it doesnt bore and frustrate people. If the people were principled enough I would let them do it by themselves and time themselves so that it would be faster and not pressuring.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY "StudyMaths.co.uk." Detention Dash. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2012. <http://studymaths.co.uk/game.php?gameID=4>.

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