Monday, March 5, 2012

Tips for Business Stats Project

The business statistics project isn't something to mess with - it's large, requires a lot of organization, and can take a lot of work. But there's no reason to worry, as long as you prepare yourself accordingly.

Follow the time table for due dates and such and you'll be good to go. Design your survey early and think of variables that would relate to one another, like GPA and studying or hours worked and money spent. It's all about the relationships - you don't need twenty variables to work with if you only plan on using five. You're going to have to fill out the data sheets, and the more variables you include in your survey, the more work you're making for yourself.

Also, be careful about who you survey. Make sure they're people you can actually access. If you're looking to do an ambitious, off-campus survey, be certain that you can get off campus to do it. It's easy to get caught up and feel like you can do the greatest survey ever, but it takes a lot more work than it seems in the beginning.

To add to that theme, make sure you start analyzing your data as soon as you get it all typed into your computer, and begin typing your final report early. You'll have a lot of data to get through, and if you wait until the last couple of days to do it, you'll be up late each night crunching numbers. The project itself is all easy and self explanatory, it can just be time consuming.

Lastly, be sure to split up tasks between you and your partner. If you don't think they're the greatest at stats, have them do a bunch of the easier calculations and then do the harder parts yourself. The point is to make sure each of you does a fair share of work.

If you're looking for topics for your survey, remember that things like GPA, work hours, hours sleeping and athletics are all easy to find relationships with. In the end, they may not be statistically significant, but that's an interesting finding too! Really any topic can be interesting, and the K College community is good to use - it's convenient and can teach you a lot about your own school.

Good luck!

No comments:

Post a Comment