Project Overview You must GATHER your own data, which will allow you to do inferences concerning the comparison of proportions or means of two populations. You must create a study, which does not have an obvious conclusion before the study is performed. Experimental Design  You must collect data in order to answer a question, which you create, for a sample you define with hopes of extending your conclusion to a population, which you determine.  If data is collected from human subjects, privacy must be maintained at all times. In fact, in some circumstances, the release of personal data could be considered a violation of school rules.  If data is collected on human subjects without their knowledge, you must clear your procedure with me beforehand.  Where feasible, you should try to meet the assumptions of the test you are planning to use (e.g., n > 30 for means, 10 in each category for proportions). That said, your sampling technique will almost certainly NOT be a simple random sample. (Sample of convenience will be acceptable for the purposes of this project, but bonus points may be given for more effective sampling techniques). Format and Style The report must have the following attributes:  It must be typed.  It should have a cover page.  Define Symbols used: You should define all symbols when writing solutions to open-ended questions. For example, when writing a null hypothesis, a student should not just write μ=0.75, but should define what μ represents. A clear and complete statement of the null hypothesis would be: “μ=0.75, where μ is the mean of the reading test scores for all students in the school.”  In order to include equations and mathematical symbols, try something like “Insert  Symbol” and look for a math or Greek section. The Report The report should have each of the following sections, clearly labeled, in the order given: A. The Abstract (no more than one page) A one page (at most!) overview of the study covering all important details (see below), covering the crucial points of the study from beginning to conclusion. Note: This is not an introduction, but rather a summary of your work. B. The Study (≈ 1 page, plus the original data sheets) 1. The question: A description in everyday English of the question you are trying to answer. Define the populations in question. 2. Sampling: A careful description of how you obtained the samples. Be very specific. How would you classify your sample? Include sample sizes. 3. Data: The original page(s) you used to record the data and a summary of the counts. This does NOT have to be typed. 4. Hypothesis Test: Complete all of the steps of a hypothesis test. Discuss the conclusion of your test in non-technical language as if explaining this to a person who has not taken statistics, including an informal explanation of the P-value in easy-to-understand terms. This is the section of the test with the single most amount of points. Be sure this is accurate! C. Discussion (≈ 1 page) Consider this question- Based on your methods, can you generalize this to the population in question? Would you feel comfortable submitting this data to a scholarly journal? Why or why not. Below, you need to either defend your sampling methods, etc, or state what would have to change to carry out a more formal study. 1. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your sampling method(s). How would you do it differently if you were performing a formal study? Here I am looking for a discussion of sampling methods, bias, etc 2. What extraneous variables became an issue that you hadn’t figured on? How would you resolve this if you were to do the whole project over? 3. Do you feel you can use your data to make inferences about the two populations as a whole? Explain your reasoning. **In this section, you need to show me that you understand the concepts of hypothesis testing as it relates to your topic!** D. Conclusion(s) (At least 1 paragraph) This is a final statement, summarizing the data and decision and how it applies to the population you studied.