Math Task #4

Kevin D. Gilbert

Travel times to school n Iowa versus Travel Times to school across the USA I began by plotting the frequency for each value for the USA (Figure 1) and Iowa (Figure 2) and found something interesting. Both charts had spikes at values divisible by 5, in fact, of the largest 25% of the USA data points, 100% were divisible by 5 and 72% of the Iowa data points were. I concluded that the data was probably collected by participants reporting their drive time as opposed to it being documented by a stopwatch or some other more formal method. I decided to plot both sets of data as histograms centered on multiples of 5. So the first set of data points included everything from 0 to 2.5, the next set was greater than 2.5 to 7.5, the next set was greater than 7.5 to 12.5, and so on. The Histograms for the USA data (Figure 3) and Iowa (Figure 4) both showed bell shaped curves and in both cases the tail on the right end was much longer than on the left. So, even though they were bell curves, neither was symmetrical. I decided to treat the 120 minute drive time in the Iowa data as an outlier and not include it since the range without it was 38 minutes as opposed to 118 minutes with it. this range was more than 3 times the range of the data without it. I left it out because I knew it would skew the analysis. The USA data did not have such an outlier. For the USA data; Min = 0 Q1 = 7 Median = 10 Q3 = 20 Max = 70 Mean = 11.67 Range = 70 For the Iowa data; Min = 2 Q1 = 5 Median = 7.75 Q3 = 11 Max = 40 Mean = 9.91 Range = 38 I then made a box and whiskers plot for the USA and Iowa data combined (Figure 5). The results show that, even though the range for the revised Iowa data was smaller, the values for Q1, Q3, the median, and the mean were all less for Iowa than what they are for the United states as a whole.

Math Task #4

Kevin D. Gilbert

I was unable to calculate the p-value. I have a vague idea of what it means but have not had statistics. I looked through all my notes, class handouts, the readings, online, and in two books Ive purchased geared toward understanding statistics but I still do not understand it. Is the travel time to school for Iowan students of grade 4 through 12 significantly different than the rest of the United States? The data shows that all the statistical values for Iowa travel time are less than what it is for the country as a whole but, with the exception of Q3, all of them differ by less than 25%. Is that significant? It depends on how much that extra 2 3 minutes means to you. Besides, there are a number of reasons the numbers may have varied. Perhaps Iowans are less truthful about how much time they spend traveling to school. Perhaps they drive faster. Since Iowa is a mostly rural state, they may not have as much traffic to slow them down as the rest of the countrys drivers do. The bottom line is that the data shows that Iowans, as a whole, spend less time commuting their children in grades 4 12 than the rest of the country does.