math

Recycling Project

China recently stopped importing other countries’ waste to process in its plants, a policy the Asian country promoted in the 1980s in order to create the raw materials that were in short supply. But starting in 2018, it stopped acquiring up to 24 kinds of waste, including plastic, meaning that developed countries will have to find a way to manage their own waste. Given this situation, investing and promoting recycling seems to be one of the most viable and sustainable solutions to address the problem of dealing with large volumes of waste. In the recycling field, European countries are leading the way — and were the first to introduce policy incentives to promote the separation of waste and recycling, as well as measures to discourage single use products like plastic bags and straws. In this regard, the EU has set the objective of recycling 50 percent of household waste in 2020, and 65 percent in 2030. From the website: http://www.atlas.d-waste.com/, you can select the recycling rate of each country. Some countries do not have the data collected and we will not be using those countries in our project. Table A, provided below shows the recycling rate (as a percent) for 11 countries.

Country Recycle Rate (as a Percent)

Mexico 3.3 Canada 26.8 United States 23.8 Spain 20.0 Norway 24.0 Japan 20.8 Australia 30.3 Iceland 37.0 Morocco 10.0 Finland 19.0 Portugal 13.0

Table A: Recycling Rate

This is an individual project and each student will submit their own project solutions. This project needs to be typed, each part needs to be correctly labeled and the questions need to be in order, and a statistical computer program needs to be used. The program I will be using is: StatDisk (www.statdisk.org). If you would like to use a different statistical program, you will need to email me letting me know which statistical computer program you are hoping to use, please let me know before next week. The project is worth 45 points.

Parts 2, 3, and 4 must have screenshot of the output from StatDisk or the computer program that you choose to use. Distributions can be created in Excel, StatDisk, or Word. You also must provide the specific answer and not just a screenshot. Answers need to be rounded 3 decimal places. No points will be rewarded for using a graphing calculator. The objective for this project is to gain knowledge of working with a statistical computer program. In addition, all work must be shown for All calculations.

1.) Create a grouped frequency distribution of the data, in Table A: Recycling Rates, with a class width of 5 percent and a starting value of 0 percent. [7 points]

2.) Create a histogram with your grouped data in part 1.). [7 points] 3.) Find the descriptive statistics of your raw data given in Table A: Recycling Rates. This

includes: sample mean recycling rate (as a percent) of the 11 countries, sample standard deviation of the recycling rate (as a percent) of the 11 countries, and the five-number summary of the data. [7 points]

4.) Create a boxplot of the raw data given in Table A: Recycling Rates above. [7 points] Do not need to include fences and this should not be a modified boxplot.

5.) Describe the shape of the distribution of the box plot in part 4.). Use complete sentences and clearly explain your reasoning. [2 points]

6.) Determine if there are any outliers of the raw data given in Table A: Recycling Rates. Must show all work. If the data has any outliers, make sure to state what the values of the outliers are. [5 points]

7.) Visit: http://www.atlas.d-waste.com/ and select a different country (one that is not listed in Table A above), and record the name of the country and the recycling rate (as a percent). Note: some countries say they do not have the data on recycling rate and do not select those countries. Please see the images and notes below for help. [2 points]

8.) Find the z-score for your new country’s recycling rate in part 7.) using the sample mean and standard deviation from above in part 3.). Show all work. [3 points]

9.) Determine if your selected country’s recycling rate (as a percent) is significantly low, significantly high, or not significant. Make sure to use complete sentences and clearly explain your reasoning. [5 points]

Visit: http://www.atlas.d-waste.com/

Select Country Data (circled in red on the image below and on the left hand side)

Click on the on a country on the map on the right (when you click on the country, the following data will come up-see image below), again remember to select a country that is not one of the 11 countries in Table I above. Also, make sure to select a country that has a recycling rate.

Another way to access the recycling rates if the map will not load on your device is:

Go to Visulization and select Recycling Rate and then select the country that you are interested in.