This week we are going to embark on a week long journey to create an object, a graph, a fact, or a statement. We have all week to do this; which means we have exactly enough time, and yet not enough time at all.
Step One: Your Question
We want to ask a question about the population of BBA.
What do people eat for lunch?
What math course are juniors going to take next year?
What are the distances people are going to travel for college?
What type of jobs do people expect to have?
Does the job someone expects to have after college match correlate with the number of AP courses people are taking?
How many seniors drive to school themselves?
How many tardies do people have to their first block classes?
For this stage, to turn in, you must have a relevant, answerable question about BBA.
Step Two: Envision your final product.
On Friday, you are going to turn in a final product for this. What is it going to look like? Here are the requirements:
A visual, be it chart, graph, table, pictogram, etc. etc. You need to be able to back up the reason you chose the representation you did.
A page explaining your methodology: A statement, a fact, or an answer to your question from Step One:
We are 95% confident that the average student spends between XXX and XXX on lunch in the cafeteria
The color choice of cars in the junior parking lot leads us to suspect that males are more likely to have silver cars.
We are 95% confident that the average speed of a car on Seminary Ave is between XXX and XXX
For this stage, to turn in, you must have a template of what you think your final product is going to look like. It should be briefly mocked up.
Step Three: Outline your process
How are you going to get your information? What will you need to do -- and when? This of this as your map to the week. What are you going to do when, and how are you going to make sure you get them all done?
Building your instrument (survey) OR creating your experiment
How, where, when, and why are you collecting your data
How the data you collect will be stored
When will you analyze your data -- and what analysis do you plan to do to it
What mathematical processes will you need to do--and when you will do them
Who in the group does which parts
For this stage you should have an outline of the rest of the week.
Step Four: Anticipation of Problems
What problems can occur as you do this? Come up with a list of things you need to watch out for:
what bias could occur?
what will time do to your sampling methods
what questions can we/are we allowed to ask of other people
is our experiment ethical (we can't shock people as they use the water fountain for example)
what if we end up sampling the same person twice?
is our data guaranteed to give results that we're looking for?
... etc. etc.
For this stage, to turn in, you should have a list of possible traps and pitfalls you are aware of that you could fall into.
Step Five: Get to it.
Do what you need to do, when you need to do it, and make it happen. I will be around, obviously, and will talk you through pieces. Each piece must me completed before you go to the next step. We are going to see all the things that can go wrong in a simple project. It's going to be awesome.
If you, or a member of your group are going to be gone, you need to talk to your group about it. You need to make a plan of how you are going to deal with that fact, and you are going to need to make sure it amenable to your whole group. If you're gone on Friday, and they're all rushing around nimbly bimbly from tree to tree trying to cover for you, there's going to be issues. I will also have each member of the group fill out a team evaluation sheet (see below).