Exploratory Data Analysis and Inference Techniques for Research Project

Abstract

Abstract: This is the last part that you will be writing. It should be no more than two paragraphs. In this section, you will be giving the reader a general overview of your project including project goal, research question, and main results.

Introduction: In this section, you will introduce your topic, formally state your research question, describe the data set that you are using (including a description of the variables that you are using in your project.

Exploratory Analysis: In this section, you are expected to explore the variables that you will using in your discussion that will lead to an answer to your research question. You will be using descriptive statistics (descriptive statistics, bar charts, pie charts, box plots, etc.) to accomplish this.  For example:

List price – describe the retail price using descriptive statistics.

Amazon price – describe Amazon’s price using descriptive statistics.

Hard/paper – Use a pie chart to show what percent of books are hard cover and soft cover in the sample dataset.

Pub year- Use a histogram to show the distribution of books organized by publishing year.

Height – Use a box plot to describe the distribution of the height of the books that are part of the sample.

Make sure to include any relevant output.

Now, it is time to compare and find interesting relationships or interesting patterns among your sample data.

Comparisons: You may use:

Use crosstabulation

Use side by side boxplots: hard/paper vs. Amazon price

Side by side bar charts

Methods (inferential statistics): Now it is time to test whether this relationship, patterns, findings that you found among the variables in your sample data set will hold truth for the population.

Make sure to state why you think the methods are appropriate for the data.

Discuss and evaluate the assumptions of the method(s) used. If your data does not quite conform to the assumptions, make note of it, and discuss the implications.

State the hypotheses you are testing, both in terms of the applied problem, and in terms of the statistical techniques used; also state which testing procedure(s) you are using. For example, We perform a hypothesis test to determine whether the mean difference of sugar content among cereals on two different shelves, 

Make sure to include any relevant output.

At minimum, your project should include the following analysis techniques:

Conduct a chi-square test

Include a confidence interval to estimate a population mean

Include a confidence interval to estimate a population proportion

Identify an opportunity to answer a question using a t-test (test the difference of means)

Identify an opportunity to answer a question using ANOVA test

Conduct correlation analysis or conduct hypothesis testing for the population mean or population proportions.

Discussion: This section expands the explanation of the results. In this part you are explaining the results and their implications. This is where you will address your research question using your results. You can also report any secondary results.

Conclusion: Summarize the findings one last time, paying close attention to the limitations of the analysis. You can share thoughts with the reader about how you might expand the study, improve on the techniques you have used, and the long-term implications of the findings.