Java Python MAST10010: Data Analysis
Assignment 1
Due Date: Friday August 23rd, 11.59pm.
Instructions
Software:
You must use Minitab to produce any graphs, tables and descriptive statistics.
Graphs:
● must include your name/student number, which can be added by Editing the graph, right-clicking and selecting Add → Footnote or Add → Subtitle.
● must be relevant. You may look at many graphs, but you should only include the most relevant graph for each question.
● should be clear: ensure that labels and titles are correct and appropriate; you can add gridlines/change symbols/colour as appropriate to make the graph clearer.
There are some marks awarded for improving upon the default from Minitab.
● Mac Users: you will need to use myUniApps or the computer labs on campus in order to edit the graphs as required above.
Statistics:
Must be relevant: you will be penalised for including statistics which are not relevant to the questions asked.
Comments:
● must be in the context of the data.
● should be supported by relevant statistics where possible.
● should be concise and informative. Word limits, where given, must be strictly ad- hered to (all word limits are a maximum, you will be penalised for going over this limit!). There is no minimum, use the marks available as a guide.
Question 1: Study Design [0 + 2 + (2+2+2) = 8 marks]
In the week 2 Tute/Lab class you designed studies to investigate research questions. For this question you may use ideas from the class discussion, but must write and submit your own work. While it is recommended to use the same question you discussed in the tutorial, you may also choose another question that was not discussed in your class.
You are allowed to simplify or adjust the question to make it more practical, and may also make reasonable assumptions about what is possible/feasible (you should clearly state these assumptions). For example, in a study to determine “How many sheep do you need to count before falling asleep?”: it is reasonable to assume that people would be able to remember (approximately) the number they got to before falling asleep; it is not reasonable to assume that you can measure their brainwaves to determine this number.
Select ONE of the following 13 research questions:
1 Monitoring the effect upon river health of an outbreak of an algal bloom.
2 Determining the effect upon AFL anterior-cruciate ligament longitude of a new boot design.
3 Is chiropractic manual therapy an effective treatment for infant colic (unexplained persistent crying)?
4 Is a new chemotherapy drug effective in treating cancer?
5 Is yoga an effective treatment for back pain?
6 Does organically grown food contain more nutrients than non-organic food?
7 Is starch consumption good for the obese?
8 Can a diet high in heart-healthy foods and antioxidants reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease?
9 Is the population of minke whales in Antarctica decreasing significantly?
10 Mobile phone usage and brain function - should we be worried?
11 Does playing action video games improve your surgery skills?
12 Do genetically modified soybeans have different (better) nutrient value than standard varieties?
13 Cows at Melbourne University’s robotic dairy (Dookie) can decide when they are milked. Are they Australia’s happiest dairy cows?
For your selected research question:
(a) Clearly state the research question you are investigating (this should be the simpli- fied/clarified question, if you have altered it).
(b) What are the Response Variable and primary Explanatory Variable? Clearly state the specific data type (eg “discrete numerical”, “nominal categorical”,...) of each.
(c) For each of the following aspects of experimental design, explain how you would implement them for your study, or why it&nb MAST10010: Data Analysis Assignment 1Prolog sp;is not possible/desirable to do so. You will be assessed on both the content and the clarity of your explanations.
i. Comparison
ii. Control
iii. Replication
The Sudoku Data
For questions 2, 3 and 4 you will need to access the data file 2024Asst1-sudoku.csv (file can be downloaded from the LMS as a .CSV file).
This file contains some of the data collected in the Sudoku Activity conducted in the Tute/Lab sessions in week 2 of this semester. The purpose of the study was to investigate factors that may affect time to complete a Sudoku puzzle. In this assignment we will con- cern ourselves with a subset of this data, those who successfully completed their assigned Sudoku puzzle within the 10 minute time limit.
Data cleaning exercise: To begin this assignment you will first need to clean the data. In particular, you will need to recode the “Hours of sleep” column to only contain numbers. Note that any person who entered “more than” or “less than” or similar, you should just replace with the number in their answer, since there is no sensible way to get more information. Many values should be missing, because although this was the most common additional question it was not answered by a majority of students. Missing values should be entered as an asterisk *. You will know you have done this correctly if you have the summary statistics:
Question 2: Exploring time taken to complete a Sudoku puzzle
[2 + 4 + 2 = 8 marks]
Calculate a new variable ‘Time (seconds)’ to complete the puzzle.
(a) Produce a dotplot and relevant summary statistics for Time (seconds), time to suc-cessfully complete a Sudoku puzzle.
(b) Describe the distribution of Time (seconds).
(c) Comment on whether the higher times (over 400 seconds) have anything in common. Restrict your comments to no more than two sentences.
[Hint: use the brush command.]
Question 3: Investigating the effect of Type of Puzzle
[2 + 3 + 5 = 10 marks]
(a) Consider the different puzzles. Do you think differences in the times to complete the puzzle can be attributed to the different symbols? Explain.
(b) Produce a comparative boxplot and summary statistics, comparing the time taken for the four (4) different puzzle types.
(c) Comment on the effect of Type of Puzzle on time to successfully complete a Sudoku puzzle.
Your comments must be less than 150 words.
Question 4: Investigating the effect of other variables
[3 + 2 = 5 marks]
(a) Produce a table comparing previous experience with Sudoku puzzles and Puzzle number. Include a short comment describing any association apparent from the table. Do you think the randomisation was adequate?
(b) Consider Hours of sleep the night before and Time (seconds). Comment on whether there is a linear relationship between these variables (you should support your com- ment with appropriate evidence).
Question 5: Good statistical graphics [3 + 3 = 6 marks]
The graph on the following page was posted with the caption “no. of golf courses in the contiguous united states bylines of latitude” (Credit: Jay Cuda (@JayCuda on Twitter/X)
The data from the table in the image are available to you on the LMS as the file “2024Asst1- golf.csv” .
(a) Identify one strength and two problems with this graph.
(b) Produce a graph which better displays these data.
Relevance, Formatting & Submission [2 marks]
You can gain an additional 2 marks by:
● only including relevant material;
● submitting a clearly legible assignment (eg all pages correct orientation);
● selecting correct page(s) for each part of each question (when you upload your as- signment to Gradescope, it will ask you to select pages: you can select multiple pages for a question part, you can also select the same page for multiple parts)