Friday, March 11, 2011

Advice for Future Students


For any future students who are taking business statistics and are required to tackle a project of this magnitude I offer some advice.

First off make sure you choose a topic that is interesting to you. This will make sure that you stay focused and motivated throughout the duration of your project. A project that is boring a pointless will simply be boring and pointless, opposed to eye opening and interesting. This will help if you can find a company and or campus organization that would like a certain survey done. This will ensure your project is meaningful and more than likely will help formulate specific questions that can be answered.

Second. Make sure you get your methodology right, it is a very important aspect of the project, biased results are worthless. When Chuck Stull says you should start handing out surveys, do it, surveys take time to collect and fill out, therefore time is of essence. Do not be afraid to branch out, a good way to increase your grade is try and deviate from only collecting Kalamazoo College student data, try western, even KVCC, an online survey can help in this aspect.

Most importantly, take your time and relish this project. It may seem mundane at times, but the implications of statistics cannot be stressed enough. We are exposed to them every single day yet more often than not we take them for granted. This project helps inform, you the creator, of the true nature of statistics and how they can be manipulated and how correlation does not always imply causation. View this project as a learning experience not a one and done type of deal.

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