Y8 Statistics Assessment

What are the different average populations in the United States from 1999 to 2010?
Introduction:

This unit in Math we are doing a statistics project. We were supposed to choose a topic that we thought would be interesting and either write a survey to collect their data or to research and gather the data that they need. I have chosen to do my project on the different population numbers in the U.S. over the course of twelve years.

Research Question: What are the different average populations in the United States from 1999 to 2010?

Hypothesis: I think that as we get closer to 2010 that the population number will increase, this is because every year more and more people are born and less people die, this means that every year there will be an increase in population.

Why I chose it: I chose this topic because I lived in New York city ever since I was six months old. Now that I am in a different country I have been interested in America much more than before. When we began this project I took this as a time to learn not only about math but to also learn about my home country.

Reference to ATL: I have used the organization skill from the ATLs because I needed to organize and put all of my data in the correct places so that it is easy to read and well put together.

Data Collection:

I got my information from Wikipedia by searching the U.S. population table. I found a very large table filled with numbers of the populations from various years. I only used a few parts of all of the data on the page because I was only collecting data from 1999 to 2010. When I collected the data I noticed that I had to add three more zeros to any number that I saw. Then I arranged all of the data that I gathered into a table. I couldnt do a frequency table because the data that I have collected isnt that type of data. My table only has two columns, one for the year and the other for the population count. On the next page is my table where I collected my data and put it in in an organized way.

Y8 Statistics Assessment
What are the different average populations in the United States from 1999 to 2010?

Data Table:

United States Population Data Table

Year 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Population Number x 1000 279,040 282,172 285,082 287,804 290,326 293,046 295,753 298,593 301,580 304,375 307,007 309,330

Y8 Statistics Assessment
What are the different average populations in the United States from 1999 to 2010?
Averages - dont forget to add three zeros after any number

Mean = 279,040 + 282,172 + 285,082 + 287,804 + 290,326 + 293,046 + 295,753 + 298,593 + 301,580 + 304,375 + 307,007 309,330 / 12 = 3,407,108

Median = 293,046 + 295,753 = 294,399

Range = 309,330 279,040 = 30,290

In this data set I cant find the mode or the number the reoccurs the most because my data isnt a frequency.

Graphs:

Y8 Statistics Assessment
What are the different average populations in the United States from 1999 to 2010?
1. In this graph I am showing the ascending population count of the United States from 1999 to 2012. This is a line graph that shows you the trend of the population numbers. You could also say that it shows you the difference in population from year to year.

Analysing In this graph you can gather from the data that in 1999 there was about 279,000 people in the U.S. The y axis is the number of population and then the x axis is the year that the count of people was taken. You can also see that the population steadily grew over the years because the data isnt all over the graph but is going up towards the higher numbers in the y axis as we get into later years on the x axis. By looking at this graph I can tell that the population grew in about the same number every year because you can see that the dots are all around the same length away from each other. This means that the population grew at the same rate in the U.S. between 1999 and 2010. By looking at this graph I can see that the population in America gets higher and higher as the years go by.

Y8 Statistics Assessment
What are the different average populations in the United States from 1999 to 2010?

2. In this graph I am also seeing the population count in the U.S. and how it progresses over the years. This bar graph shows what year the count was taken as well as the population count.

Analysing: In this graph you can see the y axis (population number x 1000) and the x axis (year count taken). The x axis doesn't actually have the year number but numbers from 1-12. In this graph you can tell that the population difference from all of the years isnt very high so it is a little hard to tell the differences between the columns. When you look closely you can see that in 1999 (#1 on the x axis) you can see that it is around 260,000 people in the U.S. at this time. When you look at 2010 (#12 on x axis) you can see that it is around 300,000 people in the U.S. that is about 40,000 more people in America than ten years before. Gathering from this graph you can tell that between the years 1999 and 2010 there was a 40,000 population difference. You can also say that it grew a tremendous amount, it grew by around 40,000 people.

Conclusion and other bits: Averages: I think that using the range was most helpful during this project because it really gave a good sense of how the population was growing at the time and at what rate. The median, or middle number, doesnt really give us any data or information that we can infer on or use to help

Y8 Statistics Assessment
What are the different average populations in the United States from 1999 to 2010?
us find out something more than just the median with our data set. I also think that using the mean isnt very helpful because it only gives us the number of people if it were evenly spread across the years.

Method: I think that my method of data collection was fast and precise and worked well for me. This is because it didnt take me very long to gather all of my data and I didnt have any troubles finding it. I do think that if I were to do this project again I would want to pick something that I could find data on my own and gather it by taking a survey or going around to ask people the questions. This is because I found that this was a little boring because I wasnt able to find the mode which is usually a very useful type of average.

Charts: I think that using the point graph is much better than the column one because the point graph can really show you the difference as well as the trend in the data. This helps because the trend in data is very important. Trends are helpful because they show you the progression over time, in my case, it shows me the progression over time of the population growth in the U.S. the point graph is also better because the column graph is a little hard to read and is hard to understand. The column graph also doesnt have very accurate characters (digits) which means that it is hard to read the graph. That is not something that someone wants in a graph because they are usually something that is easy to read and is easy to understand, the column graph wasnt like this in my case.

Conclusion: In conclusion I think that my results from my data collection does support my hypothesis because from these charts and table you can see that over each year the population grows. I also think that it shows that more people are born every day than they die because if the numbers of those two groups stayed the same then the lines and data would all be horizontal and at the same number.

I think that if I were to do this project again I would choose a whole different topic, one that would allow me to gather data myself and have a frequency. I would want to do this because then I would be able to get the mode from my data as well as being able to fully understand how statistics work and all of the skills that go into making graphs and collecting data.