SIP Proposals

First Proposal:

My first proposal for a SIP project is to use public statistics to examine the relationship between poverty levels and race. I would use data on whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and the poverty levels of the groups. For this SIP an example of a null hypothesis is that percent of people who live below the poverty level of blacks and whites are the same, therefore the difference between the two is zero. An alternative hypothesis is that the percent of blacks who live below the poverty line is greater than zero and so the difference between the percent of blacks who live below poverty and the percent of whites is greater than zero. These hypotheses could be repeated using different races because the census provides that information.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html

Second Proposal:

My second proposal for a SIP project is to study the percent of blacks in Kalamazoo who live below the poverty line and the percent of whites. I would sample residents of Kalamazoo by doing cluster samples of different blocks within the city to gather original data. Similar to the first proposal, I would have a null hypothesis that two (e.g. Asians and Hispanics) rates of people who live below the poverty line are equal. My alternative hypothesis could be that Hispanics have a higher percentage poverty rate than Asians and so the difference would be greater than zero.

sip proposals

If i were to conduct a sip idea using public data in order to collect original data I would use the US census site. I would conduct a survey viewing the better places to live in America bases off several different variables. I would randomly select states from each region of the united states in order to ensure i have a variety of states with different weather and circumstances. Then i would compare family incomes per state then adding in the variable of average temperature per year and also the number of the population in each state may be variables affecting income. I could do hypothesis testing with income through simple one tailed tests comparing souther states to northern states income. Then i could compare income of states with their average temperature or population size through hypothesis testing.

-Census.gov

For an original data sip idea, I would target the expenditures made by college students who use their own money or their parents money to pay for things such as clothes, food, alcohol, gas, coffee, etc. After randomly selecting students to participate in this survey, i would ask them for their demographic information including income and gender. Hypothesis testing would include do men or women pay more for these expenditures on their own, do higher incomes mean more parents pay for their kids, do higher income students buy more alcohol than students with lower incomes, etc.

Possible SIP Topics

For a SIP with publicly available data, one suggestion is to look at college tuition rates across the country. I would look at schools and compare different tuition rates based on their location, size, division I II or III, private or public, etc. I would use collegeboard.com to find this information. I would then try to randomly pick regions throughout the United States and look at a certain number of colleges in each area. Next I would explore some hypotheses such as: private schools are x amount more expensive than public schools, or a certain region is more expensive than another region.

For a SIP with original data I would use the topic of alcohol. I would ask students how much money they spend on alcohol in a given week, if they are a male or female, how much they study per week, what their GPA is, what their family income is, if they have a job or not, etc. Some possible hypotheses to test would be: Men spend more money on alcohol than women, those who study more spend less money on alcohol, students who have a job spend x amount more on alcohol than students who don’t have a job. A possible sample would just be randomly selected students here on campus.

SIP Proposals

For my SIP using publicly available data would analyze the increase in the autism rate over the past three decades. In the 1980's autism affected about 1 in every 10,000 children. By the late 1990's this number has increased to 1 in every 166 children. Now this number is estimated to be every 1 in 110 children. Some reasons for this increase are environmental effects increasing, and more things are being considered autistic. To study this I could compare the raw data to reported data by organizations, and hypothesis test how autism affects different races differently. Some data on autism could be found at autism society of america.
For a SIP where I could collect data on my own I would analyze the family income of incoming freshman. To study this I could encourage the college to add this to some required form, and keep the results anonymous. I could also survey incoming freshman myself while also keeping the results anonymous. A possible hypothesis is to compare the GPA of freshman to their family income. A possible sample for the survey would be to systematically select every 8th freshman in alphabetical order.

Alex Smith

Potential SIPs

Both of my Potential SIPs are pertaining to automobiles:

From Kelly Blue Books, www.KBB.com, I would be able to research vehicles and all the statistical data about them including MSRP, Miles per gallon, horsepower, weight, etc. Using this data I could hypothesis test how much horsepower would expect to have a certain amount of miles to the gallon, using the weight and horsepower, I would be able to hypothesize how well certain cars would do on some performance tests such as 0-60, quarter mile, skid pad, slalom, etc.

If I were to conduct my own statistical research, I would randomly survey about 100-200 people asking questions about the cars they own including year, company, car, trim level, the miles per gallon they would expect their car to get, any aftermarket modifications, any tickets they had received, whether or not they use radar detectors, and obviously demographic questions. From this data, I would be able to find what types of vehicles (SUV, Sedan, Coupe, etc.) consumers in the specified survey area invest the majority of their money into, as well as how much they invest in keeping their vehicles "up to date" with modifications.

SIP Proposals

My first proposal for a SIP project is based upon the use of already available public data. The data would be gathered from statistical information taken by the U.S. Census Bureau during the 2000 Census. The topic would be about education in the United States. It would be conducted by figuring out the number of people who had high school diplomas in each of the 50 states. This could be done by dividing the percentage by the total population and then subtracting that amount from the total population. In addition to gathering the information about the number of people with high school diplomas, the number of people with bachelor degrees and higher for each state would be found. Once this data was calculated it would then be possible to run hypothesis tests. Some possible tests would include comparing the number of graduates in each state, or by grouping states into regions and comparing regions. These tests could also be run for bachelor degrees and higher.

My second proposal for a SIP project involves the person conducting the study to gather their own original data. The topic would be about smoking and college students. The data would be gathered by creating a random sample and then surveying that sample. The survey would include questions such as age, race, family income, state of residence, personal income, hours of sleep, working(y or n), GPA, future plans i.e. grad school etc., year in college,athlete (y or n),smoke (y or n) if a smoker how many packs do you smoke a day, what brand, reason for smoking, date started smoking, want to quit (y or n). Hypothesis tests that could be run include do smokers have a lower or higher GPA, Do smokers have a lower family/personal income, does one state have a higher percentage of smokers, does a particular race smoke more than another, are there less athletes who smoke, do more people want to keep smoking or quit. A sample of students could be obtained either from Kalamazoo college, Western Michigan University, or a combination of the two.

References:
http://www.census.gov/

SIP Proposal

Moriam Aigoro
Business Stats
24 May 2010
Proposed SIP Topics

My first proposed SIP topic is using the public data. The public data that I would obtain is the amount of arrests amongst juveniles in the different counties in Michigan. These arrests would include how many times juveniles were arrested and the amount of times for certain types of crimes that took place for an arrest. The methodology I would use to study this data would be to divide the information by counties and compare the counties to another based on the data provided. I would compare the amount of juveniles arrested and the number of juveniles arrested for a particular crime. Some hypothesis tests that I could run are comparing two counties with the amount of arrests to determine which county actually had more arrests. Also I could run hypothesis testing on the number for each specific crime. This concludes my first proposed SIP topic.

http://fce.msu.edu/Family_Impact_Seminars/urban.html

My next proposed SIP topic would also be pertaining to juveniles. I would focus on the Kalamazoo Juvenile Home and the inmates would make up my sample. I would randomly survey the inmates and ask them questions about their level of crimes, their retention rate, the different types of crimes they have committed, the duration of their stay in the Juvenile Home and also questions pertaining to demographics. A possible hypothesis test that I would run is comparing the percentage of boys versus girls in the juvenile home and determining if actually there are more boys than girls in the juvenile home. Another hypothesis test that I would consider running is if the average retention rate amongst juveniles is that high compared to the US average. This concludes my second proposed SIP topic.