End of Semester Reflection
The most difficult and interesting mathematical challenge that I met this year would have to be my correlation of physical activity and stroke in the 50 United States. I chose this as the focus point of my end of the semester paper because instead of focusing on multiple correlation problems that I had difficulty with I wanted to focus on a correlation problem that I mastered. The data that presented itself for this research project was very vague and out of order, I had to go in and organize the data any fashion as such to be correlatable. A correlation is a Mutual relationship or connection between two or more things in this case those things would be stroke and physical activity. You go about correlating the data points by comparing them one by one for instants if Colorado had a stroke rate of 30% and a physical activity rate of 55% that would not be a very strong correlation because it is clear that physical activity has an impact on the amount of strokes.
In order to correlate the stroke rate with the physical activity rate you need to understand a few critical details. First you need to figure out how many data points you will be correlating. For my problem I had to correlate 100 points. Now to do this you have to start with one set of data. (Strokes) I would add up each individual data point and I would average them. Then I would find the difference between the average and each individual data point. I would then take the average of my 50 data points and place them in another column on my table. Then I will find the difference between the average I just took and the original data point. Then once I have that number I will square it, and then find the difference squared average. From here the process is fairly simple, I will find the difference squared average and square it again in order to find my standard deviation. At which point I can find my Z scores by subtracting my original data point for the state from the average of all 50 states divided by the standard deviation. This can be applied to a set of data to bring out the important facts. As done in my previous statistics paper on Stroke and Physical activity.
“The correlation I came across was not very strong. It is 95% accurate but with that being said my correlation was around .3 which is a rather weak correlation. The standard deviation will be 8% smaller if I know the amount of strokes and physical activity there will be. The results statistically speaking were significant. I found a 5% chance that the results were found by 'luck' which leaves a 95% significance among my data.”
I really liked this project because it finally gave me a connect of math and the real world. This project also made me realize how prominent statistics are in our day-to-day lives. I find the correlation of numbers extremely interesting and I am definitely interested in correlating the numbers that we see passing through our lives. For instance right now there is a 'crisis' that involves white police officers and African-American males. I think it would be extremely interesting to correlate the death rate involved in that situation. This project was a challenge for me and writing this paper is a challenge to because it requires me to go back over a previous learn the concept and re-memorize it which is difficult. I think these types of correlations could be extremely helpful in the business world as well. Being able to make a correlation between a product and a buyer could be extremely useful.
The most difficult and interesting mathematical challenge that I met this year would have to be my correlation of physical activity and stroke in the 50 United States. I chose this as the focus point of my end of the semester paper because instead of focusing on multiple correlation problems that I had difficulty with I wanted to focus on a correlation problem that I mastered. The data that presented itself for this research project was very vague and out of order, I had to go in and organize the data any fashion as such to be correlatable. A correlation is a Mutual relationship or connection between two or more things in this case those things would be stroke and physical activity. You go about correlating the data points by comparing them one by one for instants if Colorado had a stroke rate of 30% and a physical activity rate of 55% that would not be a very strong correlation because it is clear that physical activity has an impact on the amount of strokes.
In order to correlate the stroke rate with the physical activity rate you need to understand a few critical details. First you need to figure out how many data points you will be correlating. For my problem I had to correlate 100 points. Now to do this you have to start with one set of data. (Strokes) I would add up each individual data point and I would average them. Then I would find the difference between the average and each individual data point. I would then take the average of my 50 data points and place them in another column on my table. Then I will find the difference between the average I just took and the original data point. Then once I have that number I will square it, and then find the difference squared average. From here the process is fairly simple, I will find the difference squared average and square it again in order to find my standard deviation. At which point I can find my Z scores by subtracting my original data point for the state from the average of all 50 states divided by the standard deviation. This can be applied to a set of data to bring out the important facts. As done in my previous statistics paper on Stroke and Physical activity.
“The correlation I came across was not very strong. It is 95% accurate but with that being said my correlation was around .3 which is a rather weak correlation. The standard deviation will be 8% smaller if I know the amount of strokes and physical activity there will be. The results statistically speaking were significant. I found a 5% chance that the results were found by 'luck' which leaves a 95% significance among my data.”
I really liked this project because it finally gave me a connect of math and the real world. This project also made me realize how prominent statistics are in our day-to-day lives. I find the correlation of numbers extremely interesting and I am definitely interested in correlating the numbers that we see passing through our lives. For instance right now there is a 'crisis' that involves white police officers and African-American males. I think it would be extremely interesting to correlate the death rate involved in that situation. This project was a challenge for me and writing this paper is a challenge to because it requires me to go back over a previous learn the concept and re-memorize it which is difficult. I think these types of correlations could be extremely helpful in the business world as well. Being able to make a correlation between a product and a buyer could be extremely useful.