Here are the definitions of the graphs that I will be using for my interpretation of the data: A histogram is “often used in exploratory data analysis to illustrate the major features of the distribution of the data in a convenient form. It divides up the range of possible values in a data set into classes or groups.” It is almost like a bar graph, but instead of categorical data, a histogram displays the frequency of numerical data. The graph on the left is an example of a histogram that I made in my Statistics class earlier this year for a Pi Day Project. We had to determine if the digits of pi could be used as a random number generator. We came to the conclusion that it can indeed be used because the probability of each number occurring is very close to .1 or 10%. For more information about this, you can visit my teacher, Mrs. Blanchet's blog. A box-plot, also known as a box and whisker plot, is a “type of graph which is used to show the shape of the distribution, its central value, and variability. The picture produced consists of the most extreme values in the data set (maximum and minimum values), the lower and upper quartiles, and the median. An ogive is similar to a histogram, but instead of displaying individual frequencies, it displays the cumulative frequencies. And a stem plot is “similar to a histogram but is usually a more informative display for relatively small data sets… It provides a table as well as a picture of the data and from it we can readily write down the data in order of magnitude, which is useful for many statistical procedures… By using a back-to-back stem plot, we are able to compare the same characteristic in two different groups.” I got all of these definitions (except for ogive) from this website.I am really excited. I called the schools that I was interested in and I was able to get in touch with two of the schools. This means that I can finally start looking at actual data and start analyzing it with histograms, box-plots, ogives, and even a back-to-back stem plot. Here is a fantastic link that explains what each of these statistical terms 
means. Also within this link, there are many other statistical terms that you may not know the definition of. This link was very useful for me because it explains the term in depth and for the terms that I knew but forgot, this was a review. Back to gathering the data; well, I was able to get in touch with two of the schools via phone, but one school I had to email. I told each of the schools to give me back to data by mail by Friday (tomorrow). This means that they if they postmark the one-question survey that I have asked them to give to the students by tomorrow, I should have my data by Monday. I asked them to send it to my school because it will be easier for me to get my data rather than it being delivered to my house and then me having to bring it to school. I am really glad to know that my project is on its way and it is finally getting somewhere. I am planning on calling other schools that I was not able to get in touch with tomorrow during class. One of the reasons that some schools did not answer was because they were conducting standardized testing and could not be disturbed. Hopefully when I call them during my Statistics class, they will be able to talk with me and I can tell them all about my wonderful project! :)
means. Also within this link, there are many other statistical terms that you may not know the definition of. This link was very useful for me because it explains the term in depth and for the terms that I knew but forgot, this was a review. Back to gathering the data; well, I was able to get in touch with two of the schools via phone, but one school I had to email. I told each of the schools to give me back to data by mail by Friday (tomorrow). This means that they if they postmark the one-question survey that I have asked them to give to the students by tomorrow, I should have my data by Monday. I asked them to send it to my school because it will be easier for me to get my data rather than it being delivered to my house and then me having to bring it to school. I am really glad to know that my project is on its way and it is finally getting somewhere. I am planning on calling other schools that I was not able to get in touch with tomorrow during class. One of the reasons that some schools did not answer was because they were conducting standardized testing and could not be disturbed. Hopefully when I call them during my Statistics class, they will be able to talk with me and I can tell them all about my wonderful project! :)
I just went to read the blogs of other students in my AP Stats class. [I have attached links to the blogs of other students on the right of this blog.] They are really good! Each experiment is unique and it will take a lot to do these projects and get all the information, especially with all the things that are required of us. This project is a really good idea because we actually get to explore the community in math class -- now that's something that I though I would never do! I am really looking forward to gathering my data and also seeing what kinds of data other people are gathering. I guess I finally understand what people mean when they say that the world is just waiting for people for explore all the opportunities.
For this blog entry, my teacher asked us to answer three questions: Who is this data going to be useful for? How are we going to get the word out? And why would our topic be interesting to others? For starters, this data is going to be useful for many people, such as, educators, parents, students, and the numerous people that are in the education field. This will be useful for educators because they will actually get to see how many minutes of homework students get each night combined. This might actually influence teachers to take a moment to think about how much homework it comes out to be when homework is combined from all the classes. This will be useful for parents because they will get to see in numerical data how many minutes of homework students get all across Jefferson Parish. This can either mean that their child is getting less homework or more homework than other students. This goes same for the students. This data will be useful for the students because they will get to see how many minutes students their age spend doing homework each school night. This data is useful for pretty much everyone in the educational field because homework is the source of practice for students but if they get too much, some students just decide not to do it. Keeping this in mind, these educational officials will see how many minutes seniors spend doing homework each night. Now that I know who this data is useful for, how do I get the word out to people? Well, I will contact my local newspaper and ask them to publish this story and if explain to them why the community would care for this experiment that a simple high school senior did. Also, why would other in the community care for this experiment? They would be interested in this because it shows how much homework the leaders of the future get. I understand that homework is good for practice, but if students get too much of it, it gets tiring. With this project, the community would be made aware of the amount of time seniors spend on homework. If they are really into this experiment, I would have my contact information so that they can ask me any questions they have. 
So basically, we had to write a data analysis toolbox before we could start collecting our data. The questions that we had to answer were: Who are the individuals described by the data? What are the variables? In what units is each variable recorded? Why were the data gathered? When, where, how, and by whom were the data gathered? In addition to answering these questions, I had to write what graphs I will be using to display my results, what numerical summaries will be used and how I will be interpreting my results. All of the students in my class had to submit a data analysis toolbox and get it approved by our teacher before we could start collecting data. For starters, all of us thought that our toolbox was the best and nothing could be better, but when we got them back, we were all sadly mistaken. Our teacher did not even give us a grade for it because that is how bad they were. We were given a grade on work ethic. What our teacher intended us to do was to make this our reference for the rest of the project. With this toolbox, we would not need any other notes for the project because this would contain all of the information. I, along with other students, did not know this beforehand so all of the data analysis toolboxes that were submitted were very general and did not contain much detail. Once I knew that was what she wanted us to, I got to writing. I added a table with the names of all the schools that I will be contacting for my survey and I also added in that table the number where they could be reached along with what side of the river the school was on: East Bank or West Bank. Also, I detailed every aspect for the explanations of my graphs and how I will be interpreting them. While I was writing this, believe it or not, I was getting a deeper understanding of what I was actually looking for. In my first draft of the data analysis toolbox, I did not have any interpretation of the graphs in the context of my experiment. With the revised version, I wrote exactly what I was looking for and also other things that I would be looking for in those graphs. I really hope this is what my teacher was looking for. 
Check this link out to a blog that a parent wrote about the hours of homework students spend each night. And basically, he does not want students to have so much homework each night. I FULLY agree with this!!!!!!!! In his blog entry, he states that doctors base their treatment of their patient based on the patient's condition, and not based on their knowledge of science and medicine. Of course having a science and medicine background allows their judgment to be better, it is not as effective as the gut feeling a person may have. Christopher, the author of this blog entry, also gives a schedule of an average teenager. He states that 12 hours are spent to maintain a good health. This is half of our day. Then, about nine hours is spent on structured activities, such as, time spent at school, time spent commuting, and then the time spent on extracurricular activities. Now, the total is twenty-one hours. This only leaves three hours for the person themself. And you can’t forget that the human race is not perfect and there can be some distractions, which can extend this time. The student still needs to be relaxed in those three hours, have time for maintaining their hygiene and some other personal things. If teachers were to assign three hours of homework each night, the student would not have time to do anything else and would be grounded in work. This is not healthy for the child and teachers should keep in consideration the schedule of students outside of schools and assign an adequate amount of homework.
In the modern technology world, everyone is using blogs to write about their personal lives or just to communicate with other people. But, not all blogs are, in the words of my statistics teacher, “hot”. For a blog to be considered “hot”, it has to way the person writes has to stand out to the reader. Like, the author of the blog has to be personal and interact with the reader through the writing style. So to check out what other people have on their blogs, I searched up blogs on blogger. I found some interesting blogs, some boring blogs, and some blogs for which I have no words for. The last ones that I mentioned were a bit … interesting … :) Basically, what I saw in most of the blogger blogs were in different languages. That really shows the diversity of blogger blogs. Those blogs seemed more interesting than those that were in English because they had more pictures and they just seemed “hotter”. There was this one blog that I loved! It was really interesting because it had a bunch of pictures. This blog was entitled “Unshelved Words.” This blog had descriptions to go along with the pictures that the author wrote. That was something that seemed “hot” to me! My teacher assigned this blog as a project and she wants us to associate a picture with each of our blog entries. That’s what I have been doing, but this blog has helped me to consider adding more pictures. As everyone has heard, pictures are worth a thousand words and it would take too much time to write everything down. Also, pictures make everything else more interesting because most people are visual learners and enjoy looking at pictures and understanding a concept rather than reading a description of it. Here is a link to the awesome blog. Hope you like it and I hope you like my blog too.
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