MAT022 Foundations of Statistics and Data Science Summative Assessment 201920
MAT022 Foundations of Statistics and Data Science Summative Assessment 201920
Summative assessment for the module is by means of a single report on your statistical analysis of data related to the decathlon, a combined event in athletics where an athletes performance in ten trackandfield events is determined by a points system.
This form of assessment has been chosen because, as professional statisticians and data scientists, you will often be asked to investigate a data set and report on whether it contains anything useful or interesting. The assessment will also help you to prepare for writing your MSc dissertation in the summer.
Assessment type Weight Max. length Format Deadline
Report 100 10 pages PDF Friday 10 January 2020 Your report will be assessed according to how well you are able to
analyse the data set, 40interpret the results of your analysis, and 30present the results of your analysis and interpretation of the data set. 30
You are free to use any statistical software package to conduct your analysis e.g. R or SPSS, and any word processing software to prepare your report e.g. LATEX or Microsoft Word.
1 The data
You are asked to write a report on data related to the decathlon. This is a combined event in athletics where an athletes performance in ten trackandfield events is determined based on a points system. The winner of the competition is the athlete who has the most points after all ten events have been completed.
The basic decathlon data set records the performance of elite decathletes over the period from 1986 to 2006, and has been widely studied. The set consists of 7968 observations on 24 variables as shown in Table 1, and is available on Learning Central as a .csv file.
The basic data set is also included with the GDAdata package in R and can be loaded as follows.
install.packagesGDAdata
dataDecathlon, packageGDAdata
summaryDecathlon
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MAT022 Foundations of Statistics and Data Science Summative Assessment 201920
Variable Description
Totalpoints Total points achieved over all 10 events DecathleteName Decathletes name
Nationality Decathletes nationality
m100 Time for the 100 metres secs Longjump Distance jumped metres
Shotput Distance putting the shot metres Highjump Height jumped metres
m400 Time for the 400 metres secs m110hurdles Time for the 110 metres hurdles secs Discus Distance throwing the discus metres Polevault Height achieved metres
Javelin Distance throwing the javelin metres m1500 Time for the 1500 metres secs
yearEvent Year of performance
P100m Points for performance in 100 metres
Plj Points for performance in long jump
Psp Points for performance in putting the shot Phj Points for performance in high jump
P400m Points for performance in 400 metres
P110h Points for performance in 110 metres hurdles Ppv Points for performance in pole vault
Pdt Points for performance in discus
Pjt Points for performance in javelin P1500 Points for performance in 1500 metres
Table 1: The basic decathlon data set
To expand your analysis of the decathlon you are encouraged to find additional sources of data, making sure that the provenance of the sources are evaluated and discussed in your report. You are also encouraged to explore additional statistical methods that have not been discussed in the lectures and notebooks, making sure that you provide a brief description of these methods along with references to the relevant literature. You can nevertheless base your study entirely on the data set provided, it has plenty of scope for you to produce an excellent report.
2 The report
The ability to write clearly and concisely is an important professional competence. To encourage writing that is brief and to the point, your reports are limited to a maximum of 10 pages. It is often far more difficult to express yourself in 100 words than in 1000 words, especially when you have a lot to say, so please do not underestimate the challenge posed by this restriction. The modest page limit will also encourage you to be selective in the results you choose to present.
A suggested structure for your report is shown in Table 2. Note that the title page, abstract, table of contents and list of references will not contribute towards the page count.
The title page should contain the title of your report, your name and student number, and the date on which your report was completed.
The abstract should contain a short summary of the report and its main conclusions.
The table of contents should list the number and title of each section against the number
of the page on which the section begins.
The introduction should consist of a few short paragraphs, describing the purpose of the
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MAT022 Foundations of Statistics and Data Science Summative Assessment 201920
Title
Abstract
Table of contents
1 page 100 words
1. Introduction
2. Background
3. descriptive analysis 4. inferential analysis 5. inferential analysis 6. Conclusion
12 page 121 page 12 pages 23 pages 23 pages 12 page
ReferencesAppendices 2 pages max.
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Table 2: Report structure
report and providing a brief outline of its contents.
The background chapter should include a brief review of any relevant literature, and provide a context for the work presented in the report.
The report should contain a relatively short section on a descriptive analysis of the data, with a title chosen to reflect what the section contains.
The main part of the report should consist of one or more sections on an inferential analysis of the data. Here you should formulate hypotheses, conduct statistical tests and discuss the results of these tests. The titles of these sections should reflect what the sections contain. The conclusion should consist of a few short paragraphs, providing a summary of the report and a brief outline of some ideas for future work.
Any references should be typeset using the Harvard referencing style.
The report may contain a single appendix for large figures and tables.
Assessment criteria
Detailed assessment criteria are shown in Table 3.
4 Guidelines for writing reports
The golden rule when writing is to always think of the reader. For scientific reports, readers will typically want to read something interesting and to learn something in the process.
Not interesting Quite interesting
Very interesting
What do we mean by interesting?
The average exam marks of statistics and data science students.
The average marks of male students, the average marks of female students, and the results of a test of whether any difference is statistically significant.
The average marks of male students, the average marks of female students, a statistical test of whether any difference is significant, and some speculation about why there is a significant difference, or alternatively why there is not.
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MAT022 Foundations of Statistics and Data Science Summative Assessment 201920
Level
Analysis
40
Discussion
30
Presentation
30
Distinction
70100
Hypotheses are inter esting and original. Methods are appro priate and applied carefully and precisely. An interesting descrip tive analysis is included and reported correctly.
Inferences are valid and supported by ev idence. Original and interesting conclusions are articulated. There is some shrewd spec ulation about possible causal factors.
A high standard of writing is maintained throughout. The nar rative is clear, coher ent, eloquent and re fined. Figures and ta bles are used creatively.
Merit
6069
Hypotheses are formu lated correctly. Meth ods are appropriate and applied correctly. A moderately interesting descriptive analysis is included and reported correctly.
Inferences are valid and supported by evidence. Interesting conclusions are articulated. There is some speculation about possible causal factors.
A good standard or writing is maintained throughout. The nar rative is clear and co herent. Figures and ta bles are used to illus trate the narrative.
Pass
5059
Hypotheses are formu lated correctly. Meth ods are applied cor rectly for the most part. A descriptive analysis is included and reported correctly.
Inferences are mostly valid and supported by some evidence. Some relatively inter esting conclusions are articulated.
An acceptable standard of writing is maintained throughout. The nar rative is lacklusture and sometimes unclear. Figures and tables do not always illustrate the narrative.
Fail
049
The analysis is bland and almost entirely de scriptive.
Inferences are invalid or not supported by evi dence. There is little of any interest.
The report is poorly written. The narrative is disjointed and hard to follow.
Table 3: Assessment criteria
Audience. The target audience for your report is this years cohort students on the Foundations of Statistics and Data Science module, so you can assume that your readers are familiar with the methods and terminology established within the lectures and notebooks. If you choose to use methods that have not been covered in lectures, you must ensure that any new terms are properly defined, and references to the relevant literature included.
Analysis. The reader shoud be satisfied that you have performed your analysis correctly, and in particular that you have verified the conditions that are necessary to apply the various methods. Your methods should be introduced with a brief summary of their main features, but technical details should not be discussed at length, although you might consider providing the interested reader with references to the relevant literature.
Navigation. Do not assume that the reader will read the report from start to finish, as one might read a novel. Reports should be made easy to navigate using numbered sections and subsections together with crossreferencing. Once you have written a first draft, it will need careful editing before it becomes a coherent and polished report. This stage always takes longer than you think!
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MAT022 Foundations of Statistics and Data Science Summative Assessment 201920
Scientific writing. For scientific reports we aim for a style of writing that is clear and concise. Make sure that sentences are unambiguous and that a good standard of writing is maintained throughout the report.
Sections should not start abruptly with the subject matter, but rather with an introductory sentence or short paragraph. Sections should also end with concluding sentence or short paragraph.
All figures and tables must be numbered and have captions. Figures or tables that are not mentioned at least once in the text should not be included.
A qualified statement is one that express some level of uncertainty about its own accuracy, and should always be used when drawing conclusions from the results of a statistical analysis, and especially when speculating about possible causal factors. Common phrases that indicate qualified statements include This suggests that …, It appears that …, We might conclude that …, There is some evidence to indicate … and so on.
Be careful with florid turns of phrase, whatever their merit as literature. Academic reports are primarily a way of communicating information, and care must be taken to accommodate readers from diverse backgrounds, including nonnative English speakers. Reports should use everyday words and simple grammatical structures as far as possible.
Plagiarism
The basic decathlon data set has been widely studied and you will find plenty of material online about this data. Plagiarism is presenting other peoples work and ideas or ideas as your own, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. The need to acknowledge others work applies not only to text, but also to computer code, figures, tables etc. You must also attribute text, data, or other resources downloaded from websites. Following submission your report will be analysed by the TurnitIn software, and any report in which plagiarism is detected will receive a mark of zero.
Please submit your report via Learning Central on or before Friday 10 January 2020.
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