Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Maths Performance Task-Personal Reflection


(i) Role of statistics in real life.
On what i know about statistics, it is about data collection o
f any kind and analysis of the collected data in large quantities. It is often represented in a graph with one line being the change in the amount variable and the other is change in time or group. Different graphs have different change in time or group such as a line graph is only used in the change in time while a bar graph can be both the change in group and time.
Statistics can be used to measure the quantity of almost any variable, ranging from the amount of water used, to the population of a city and to the change in the economy. One of my encounter with statistics is when i used to take the height of a growing plant during a science project. During then, i used the line graph as it can easily show the viewers the change in the height of the plant over the next few days.
In newspaper articles, statistics are usually used to show the economic movement, casualties from a natural disaster etc. such as the recent Japan earthquake and tsunami.

Source: Wikipedia.org

This image shows the intensity of the quake in different parts of Japan. It contains a legend which shows us the intensity of the certain place marked by different colors. In my opinion, it is a good way to easily show a person immediately which part of Japan has the worst of the quake compared to bar graphs, although it shows which place has the highest intensity easily with the bar of highest intensity being the tallest and the name of the place. Not all statistics result may be correct or real, as it depends on the person making the graph, on wether he or she is biased or has wrong information about the statistic graph variable, such as the person may lie about his or her country's economic report, in order to show that his or her country's economic is better than what it should be. In my point of view, a statistic table should be taken by different reporters and then decide upon the most accurate and fair result.

ii) Learning experience.
I believe that my team has so far done a great job on the performance task, as we are able to come out with conclusions and graphs to represent our findings. My role in the project was to gather individual charts of different areas and compile them in the findings of the percentage of buses that came on time against the percentage of buses that did not come on time. After that, me and my group members discussed about the conclusion and how to present our data in the poster. I believe that my group members' strength lies in the ability to create a decorative poster and graphs as two of them are from media club. The main challenge was deciding on what hypothesis and conclusion we should have as our group takings were based on bus stops inside GRCs and a SMC. Also, we have to void some takings which were incomprehensible due to the fact that the reading could not be true, for example, if the person stayed only at the bus stop for one hour and thirty minutes, there could not be an occurrence of 12 buses that have an expected arrival time of 12 minutes. If i were to do a similar project such that some statistics have to be taken, i would prefer to take them on my own than to rely on other's taking, such that i know my own readings are reliable and consistent according to myself.

2 comments:

  1. 1. There is room for expansion for the brief description on statistics. For instance, the impact, what are the different graphs can be used, etc.

    2. Your sharing of the recording of the height of plant is something not just done at home or school, but also in experimental labs. So, why do you think people (liek you) want to monitor the heights of plants?

    3. You've given a pretty comprehensive account on how statistics come into play using just the Japan Earthquake instance. Good.

    LEARNING EXPERIENCE (Performance Task)
    4. You highlighted one important point - that is, do not use what is given without checking if the data is reasonably reliable, which is affected by the way data is collected. So, what precautious measures would you take to ensure that the data you collected is reliable?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Check and set the time of the blog to Singapore time.

    ReplyDelete