ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
What are the big problems facing humanity and our local communities?
How can we tackle these issues and communicate what we learn with the public?
What does all this data mean?
How do you interpret data and graphs?
What now?
PROJECT COMPONENTS
· Analyzing claims, bias, valid conclusions
· Measures of Central Tendency
· Localized Data Study: Measures of analysis, correlation
· Statistics in the media
· Which watermelon is best?
· Analysis Proposal: Research questions, organizations, indicators
Here are the urls for the various departments of public health (look for keywords like datasets or data tables):
Health Data.Gov - http://www.data.gov/
International Demographic Data through GapMinder - http://www.gapminder.org/data/
Google's Public Health Database - http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory
California Department of Public Health - https://cdph.data.ca.gov/ (click "datasets" under viewtypes) and http://www.cdph.ca.gov/data/statistics/Pages/default.aspx
San Diego County of Public Heatlh - http://www.sandiegocounty.gov/hhsa/programs/phs/
Centers for Disease Control (National Data) - www.cdc.gov/DataStatistics and http://wonder.cdc.gov/
U.S. Census Data - http://www.census.gov/2010census/data/
International Census Data - http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/informationGateway.php
National HIV Behavioral Surveillance - http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/systems/nhbs/
A. Compile and Organize your data so you can select relevant indicators
i. Label tabs on spreadsheet (individual sheets) to help you keep track of indicators
ii. Create new blank sheets to compare specific indicators by copying and pasting the two indicators and creating scatter plots based on your research questions. For example, "Does gender correlate with high school dropout rates?" You would then compare gender and dropout rates by state or over time.
B. Calculate the mean, median, and mode for each indicator, if applicable.
i. Here is a video on how to use Google Spreadsheets to calculate the above values. These are the same calculations that we did for the Localized Data Analysis
C. Calculate the correlation coefficient, do a regression line analysis, determine causation or not
FINAL PRODUCTS
Fact Sheet (should include the following sections; examples linked on class calendar)
· Title
· Introductory Paragraph
· Research Question(s) and Essential Question(s)
· Sample Dataset
· Graph
· Key Findings (this should include all your findings not just what we can glean from your graph) and should have some statistical analysis in it.
· Recommendations: next steps, solutions, now that we know this what do we do
· References
· Limitations
· Authors
Visualization (geographic or time determination, two indicators)
· Combining indicators in a visual representation of findings
· Multiple representations, use of color, shapes, etc., add to viewers understanding of results
· Possible Ideas for visualizations:
- Examples linked on class calendar
- Slideshow above of class of 2014 student work
- http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html