SIP PROPOSAL

My first SIP topic, using publicly-available data, would be taking a look at the highest paid professional sports teams, and comparing whether higher paid teams have better results in their respective sports. The New York Yankees recently won the World Series last year, and it so happens that they are the highest paid team in all of professional sports. But then, you have a team like the Dallas Mavericks, who are the fifth highest paid team in professional sports, who have yet to win a championship. So the methodology I would use is watch and follow one of the highest paid professional sports teams during their season, and maybe try and get an internship or set up an interview with the owner or general manager of a professional sports team, and ask them what goes into making a good team, and if they believe paying higher salaries improves performance, and gets star athletes to come to your team to try and win championships. I don't believe this would be that difficult, because just 2-3 hours away are the Detroit Tigers, who are one of the highest paid Major League Baseball teams. So overall, the hypotheses I would test is if higher paid professional sports teams, over the years, have had more success in their respective sports than that of lower paid professional sports teams, and if professional athletes that get high paying contracts, are more likely to play as good than when they had lower salaries earlier in their career. I would find the solution to this simply by looking at their statistics over the years they were paid lower, and the years were they were paid higher, and compare the two to see if there was an increase in the majority of their production statistics , or a decrease in the majority of their production statistics.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/post/The-10-highest-paid-sports-teams-in-the-world?urn=top,230688

Another SIP topic to collect original data would be to survey a sample of students (methodology) here at Kalamazoo College on whether they think a new, bigger weight room should be built for the college. I would draw up questions such as: how often do you work out? do you work out? should Kalamazoo College spend millions on a new weight room? The hypotheses I would test seeing whether students who work out would more so rather have a weight room than students who don't work out, and whether more male students wanted a new weight room than female students, and if the majority of the sample I took of students would want a new weight room, all factors included.