stat 201 lab report

STAT 201: Tips on EWA for Lab Session 8

Due Date: A hard copy of our paper is due at the beginning of class on November 21 (for MWF class) and November 22 (for T

and Th class) Papers that are submitted after due date will recieve a 25% late penalty and will only be accepted through November

25 th

. Papers submitted after November 25 th

will receive a zero.

Style: The text of the EWA must be typed. Some neat, hand-written labels and/or numbers on figures are permitted.

Independent Writing: The EWA is done independently, not in your lab group. Although data values may be the same, individual

writing is required from each student. Papers that do not reflect individual independent writing will be submitted to the Office of

Academic Integrety for review.

Overview of Paper Sections:

Title: Make sure that your EWA has a descriptive title – EWA or Lab 8 or ‘Simply a Matter of Taste’, the book’s title is

unacceptable.

Abstract: This is a stand alone section. It is written to give the reader a brief synopsis of the experiment and some general findings.

This is written for a person who is doing research on a topic possibly related to your experiment. Be sure to be specific, yet brief.

Even though the abstract comes first in your paper, it is written last. It is a summary of your paper, and is difficult to write well

without having written your paper. There will be some redundancy from other parts of the paper.

In the abstract be sure to include:

 The purpose of the experiment

 A brief description of the data collection and analysis (exclude fine details which will be covered in your paper)

 Your conclusion – which product was most preferred?

 Major results that supported those conclusions: the results of your hypothesis test (in language that anyone could understand) and

a good interpretation of your confidence interval for the proportion.

Materials and Methods: This section should include:

 Description of experiment’s purpose (Hint: what were you trying to decide?)

 State the materials that were used.

 Description of basic experiment – describe how the experiment was set-up

 Note: Tell the reader that a single-blind taste test was performed. Why is it a single-blind test? How was the assignment of the

Brands determined? How did we randomize which brand was given to each subject first?

 Description of statistical methods. Methods used include: one-sample hypothesis test for the population proportion and the

confidence interval for the proportion. Elaborate on each method – do not just list them! We’ll discuss each method more in

class. Describe not only what methods were used but why they were used in the context of this taste test. Do NOT give any

numbers, just describe the analysis techniques that were performed. Someone who knows nothing of the experiment should be

able to repeat the entire analysis based on your description.

Results: In this section, Tables and Figures are presented without interpretation. There should be a brief "road map" paragraph

explaining to the reader what Tables and Figures are found in this section.

Results section should include:

 Note that a roadmap PARAGRAPH (not a list) is required to describe the tables and figures in the results section. This should

appear at the beginning of the Results section. The roadmap paragraph consists of approximately one sentence per table

explaining to the reader what information is contained in the following tables. Do NOT tell why the table is important – you have

already covered this in the materials and methods section.

 Include a pie chart or a bar graph showing the proportion who preferred the bartain/brand name

 Include a table with the number of subjects, number of subjects preferring the bargain brand, the sample proportion (p-hat)

 Include a table with the results from your hypothesis test – this will include the test statistic, p-valule, and decision.

 Include a table with the lower and upper bounds of the confidence interval.

Discussion: In this section, make sure that you do the following:

 Address the purpose of the experiment.

 Discuss the results from the hypothesis test and confidence interval for the proportion. Interpret the results of the hypothesis test

in such a way that a general reader would understand your findings. Also, give a good interpretation of the confidence interval.

Make a connection between the hypothesis test and confidence interval for the proportion!

 Discuss any shortcomings of the experiment – should there have been additional steps in the protocol of the experiment to

eliminate bias, etc.

 Ideas for further experimentation: what could be done to change the experiment? Do not include ideas that are totally unrelated to

a taste test!

Appendix: Attach a sheet showing all work for the hypothesis test and confidence interval. This section can be handwritten or

Microsoft equations can be used as well.