Mathematical Studies SL

Internal Assessment

The relationship between womens height and the heel height of shoes
Introduction

Since I was a child, I have been designing and creating fashion sketches. Over the course of
time, I became more fascinated by shoes, especially high heels. I dreamt of wearing them, but
as I became older I grew taller as well, and realized that it is not always comfortable to wear
high heels when you are taller than the average woman. I also discovered that many of my
shorter friends would wear higher heels than me in order to look taller and this is how I
came up with idea of investigating this for my internal assessment.

Statement of the task

The aim of this investigation is to find out whether the height of a woman determines
what heel height in shoes she chooses to wear. In order to do this, I created a questionnaire
and asked my friends and family to fill it out, writing down their height and the heel height of
their favourite shoes, as well as the heel height of their everyday shoes. In this way, the
gathered data includes womens height and the heel height of the shoes they feel prettiest in,
and also the heel height the shoes that they feel most comfortable in.

Plan of investigation
I will start out by finding the average of the heel height in favourite shoes and everyday shoes.
Thereafter, I will calculate the standard deviation to check how dispersed the data is.
Afterwards, I will organize the data into groups of heights and write down the values in two
tables. The first table will consist of the height of women and the heel height of their favourite
shoes, and the second one will include the height of women in regards to the heel height of
their everyday shoes. Women that are between 150-160 cm, 160-170 cm, and 170-180 cm are
placed in separate groups. Heel height was organized into groups between 0-3 cm, 3 > 6
cm, 6 > 9 cm, 9 > 12 cm, 12 > 15 cm, and 15 > 18 cm. These tables Commented [Office1]: The >-signs are in the wrong
directions
were used in order to further investigate whether the height of women and their shoes heel
height are dependent on each other using a chi-squared test. Commented [Office2]: You need to explain the purpose
of doing the different calculations
Commented [Office3]: Read criteria A and B and add
information about your data collection acccordingly
The average of the heel heights of favourite shoes were calculated by adding all values x in
the column What is the heel height of your favourite shoes? (Appendix), and dividing by n
(number of rows), using the formula shown below:

Example calculation from column X:

0 + 5 + 7.5 + 0 + 8 + 10
=
62

475
=
62

= 7.669354839

The average of the heel heights of the everyday shoes was calculated in the same way, but
now using values y from the column What is the heel height of your everyday shoes?:

= 2.419354839

Standard deviation
After finding out the average heel heights for both columns, the standard deviation was
calculated in order to see the spread of the data. The formula for standard deviation that was
used is as follows:

( )2
=

Sx is the standard deviation for column X (favorite shoes), xi is each one of the values in
the column, and n represents the total number of values in the column (in this case there is a
total of 62 values in both columns). An example calculation is shown below:

(0 7.669354839)2 + (5 7.669354839)2 + (10 7.669354839)2

=
62

= .

The same method was used to calculate the standard deviation for column Y (everyday
shoes):

= .

Commented [Office4]: Why do you do this? What is

your conclusion?

Chi-squared test
A chi-squared test ( 2 ) can be conducted to test the dependency between data. In this
investigation, its purpose it to check if there is a relationship between the height of a women
to the heel hight of her shoes. The following equation shows how the chi-squared value, ( 2 )
is calculated:

( )2
2 =

= Observed frequencies
= Expected frequencies

Formula for finding the degrees of freedom (df):

= ( 1)( 1)
Observed data

Table 1: Height and favourite shoes

0-3(cm) 3-6(cm) 6-9(cm) 9-12(cm) 12-15(cm) 15-18(cm) Total:

150 < 160 2 3 4 2 0 0 11

160 < 170 5 10 7 8 3 1 34

170 < 180 2 4 3 4 3 1 17

Total: 9 17 14 14 6 2 62

Table 2: Height and everyday shoes

0-3(cm) 3-6(cm) 6-9(cm) 9-12(cm) Total:

150 < 160 10 1 0 0 11

160 < 170 26 5 2 1 34

170 < 180 14 1 1 1 17

Total: 50 7 3 2 62

(Insert: Example of how to calculate observed/expected frequenices)

Expected frequencies

Table 3: Height and favourite shoes Commented [Office5]: Expected values needs to be
greater than 5
0-3(cm) 3-6(cm) 6-9(cm) 9-12(cm) 12-15(cm) 15-18(cm) Total:

150-155 1.596774194 3.016129032 2.483870968 2.483870968 1.064516129 0.3548387097 11

155-160 4.935483871 9.322580645 7.677419355 7.677419355 3.290322581 1.096774194 34

160-165 2.467741935 4.661290323 3.838709677 3.838709677 1.64516129 0.5483870968 17

Total: 9 17 14 13 9 2 62
The null (H0) hypothesis: The height of heels depends on the height of a person.

The alternative (H1) hypothesis: The height of heels does not depend on the height of a
person. Commented [Office6]: Its the other way around

Degrees of freedom: (6 1) (3 1) = 5 2 = 10

(Insert example calculation of how X2 was calculated)

Chi2 value is: 4.558668744

The critical value is a pre-calculated given value that depends on the degrees of freedom and Commented [Office7]: ????

the significance level of the test. I calculated the df to be 10, and chose the critical value to be
5%, using an online website1, I found that the critical value in this case is:

18.307

If the X2 value is less than the critical value, the null hypothesis (H0) is not rejected. Commented [Office8]: wrong notation

Since 18.307 > 4.558668744, this means that the H0 is not rejected, thus, the heel height of a
womans favourite shoes depends on the height of her. Commented [Office9]: check this (together with my
comments above about null hypothesis and alternative
hypothesis

1 http://sites.stat.psu.edu/~mga/401/tables/Chi-square-table.pdf
The calculations for the second table are made in the same manner

Expected frequencies

Table 4: Height and everyday shoes Commented [Office10]: same comment as for the
previous table
0-3(cm) 3-6(cm) 6-9(cm) 9-12(cm) Total:
150-155 8.870967742 1.241935484 0.5322580645 0.3548387097 11
155-160 27.41935484 3.838709677 1.64516129 1.096774194 34
160-165 13.70967742 1.919354839 0.8225806452 0.5483870968 17
Total: 50 7 3 2 62

H0, null hypothesis: The height of heel in peoples everyday shoes depends on their height.

H1, alternative hypothesis: The height of heel in peoples everyday shoes does not depend
on their height. Commented [Office11]: same again

Degrees of freedom (table 4): (4 1) (3 1) = 3 2 = 6

Chi2 value is: 2.4444767

Critical value with 5% significance value is: 12.592

12.592 > 2.4444767

Meaning that the null hypothesis is not rejected, thus, the height of heels on everyday shoes
also depends on the height of a woman.
Discussion/validity
- I used excel to calculate all the data in order to be more precise
- Choose a significance that is lower than 5% to get more precise calc.
- Few of the expected frequencies were lower than 0 which they cannot be less
precise calculations

Conclusion

Bibliography
Blythe, Peter, et al. Mathematical Studies Standard Level. Oxford University Press, 2012

http://sites.stat.psu.edu/~mga/401/tables/Chi-square-table.pdf
Appendix

What is your height? X: What is the heel height of Y: What is the heel height of
(cm) your favorite shoes? (cm) your everyday shoes? (cm)
151 0 0
155 5 2
157 7.5 5
157 7 0
157 3 3
159 8 3
160 10 0
160 5 3
160 11 2.5
160 4 2
160 7 1.5
161 1 1
161 5 5
161.5 5 4
162 10 3
163 0 0
163 5 2.5
163 14 10
164 7 4
164 7 2
164 5 2
164 10 3
165 2 2
165 5 0
165 10 2
165 15 0
165 5 2
166 12 1
166 2 2
166 12 5
167 9 6
167 10 1
168 7 0
168 6 0
168 6 0
169 14 8
169 8 3
170 16 7
170 8 3
170 3 0
170 5 1
170 12 3
170 12 2
170 4 2
170 8 2
171 12 1
171 7 0
171 4 2
172 5 3
172 4 0
172 12 5
172 12 3
172 8 0
173 17 2.5
173 13 2
174 5 0
175 14 0
177 15 10
178 2 0
178 0 0
178 8 3
163 10 8