Think of some variables that you see every day. In the morning, you might check the weather and see temperature or rainfall amounts. In a class of students, your instructor has a column of numbers representing your recent test grades. Your checking account at a bank might tell you how much money you’ve had at the end of the day each day of the week. Your phone might record how many minutes (hours!!!) you spent looking at your screen. These are all pretty common variables!
Some of them are not classified as “normal” variables, though. A normal variable is one that has an approximately bell-shaped curve when graphed. That means it has some other characteristics, too: It’s roughly symmetric, unimodal (clustering around one hump), etc.
One particular number can always be normally distributed if we draw a large enough sample. The central limit theorem tells us that the mean is normally distributed if a large enough sample size is drawn. Even if the variable you’re studying is wildly unlike the bell-shaped curve, a graph of several means taken from that variable will be approximately normally distributed (with sufficient sample size)!
Attached below is a data set of temperatures taken from a station near Miami, Florida. You’re going to use a spreadsheet program (Excel, Google Sheets, “Numbers” on a Mac, or something similar) to generate random numbers and randomly select from this data set. View the attached PDF to get started!
Videos made to help with the randomization:
Excel
https://youtu.be/3Qoal98eb1kLinks to an external site.
Stats Project One Using the Program Google Sheets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksFr_IscNeQ&feature=youtu.beLinks to an external site.
Stats Project One Using the Program the program Numbers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPITbJlHCfE&feature=youtu.beLinks to an external site.
NOTE: Make sure to include the two columns of data that you are creating! Check out the appendix in “Project One Example.pdf” to see how you can do that. You can just copy and paste the data into your document.
Aligns with course objective “Calculate and compare data”
Miami_Precipitation.csv
Project_1_Instructions.pdf
Project_One_Rubric.pdf
Project_One_Example.pdf
Project_One_Example.pdf
