6: Conclusion

Investigative Question

The Conclusion looks back to the Problem and tries to answer the investigative question.

We asked a question like:

I wonder whether the median weight of station wagons is greater than the median weight of hatchbacks across all new cars sold in NZ in 2018?

The Analysis section gave information about the median weight and IQR of weights of a sample of cars from the population.

We used these to calculate informal confidence intervals for the population medians (ICI's) for the median weight in each group of the population.

Now we ask - what does the overlap of the ICI's tell us about the median of each group in the population? Is there enough information to say that one population median is larger than the other?

Context

It should be crystal clear what the answer is to the investigative question that was first stated in the Problem.

The Conclusion finishes off the report, by presenting evidence that answers the investigative question. Is there enough evidence to say "yes, there's probably a difference in the population"?

All of the Conclusion should be in context. It isn't about medians and ICI's, it's about whether we know enough about the median weights of new station wagons and hatchbacks in our small sample to infer anything about ALL new cars in NZ in 2018.

Your Problem section may have made an hypothesis about the context. Your Conclusion should only address the investigate question.