Mathematics Homework Help

Math 136
Price of Textbooks in the GCC Bookstore—Fall 2021
Due Date: Monday, December 6th by 11:59PM in Canvas

The purpose of this project is to estimate the mean price of textbooks in the Glendale College bookstore. You need to go to the bookstore’s website and collect a sample consisting of the prices of the books (price of buying new version only).

1.) Plan and describe your sampling method—simple random, stratified, cluster, systematic, or any combination of these four. You just cannot use convenience sampling. Remember that you need to sample the books at random. You should collect a sample of at least 40 textbooks. Only choose textbooks from Fall 2021. Clearly explain in detail how you obtained your random sample. Keep in mind that you cannot pick the books “conveniently”; do not just pick 40 books from one single department. You should come up with a sampling method that tries to capture as wide a variety of textbooks as possible. Take advantage of the random number generator in StatCrunch. Watch the accompanying video for further explanations.

2.) Execute your sampling method. List all sampled books in a table (can be done in Microsoft Word). You need to record the name of the book, the author, the price for buying a new version, and the class. For example:

ex; (1) Older Beginner Piano Course, Bastien, $9.95, Music 161

3.) Make a frequency and relative frequency table, and frequency histogram of the price of the books. You may choose the bin width. Describe the distribution (shape, center, and spread). Attach the frequency and relative frequency table and histogram made on StatCrunch to your project (screenshot is fine).

4.) Check for outliers of the prices. Do this by computing the fences and by creating a boxplot. Provide the boxplot from StatCrunch (screenshot is fine).

5.) Choose your own confidence level and construct and interpret a confidence interval estimate of the mean price of all books in the bookstore. Provide the results of the CI from StatCrunch (screenshot is fine) and check the requirements for constructing the CI.

SKIP #6
6.) Compare your confidence interval with one other group from class. Report their sample mean and confidence interval for the mean price and include it in your project. Be sure to state the names of the members of the group. Are your results similar? Does your group have a sample mean that is much lower or higher that the other group? Does your group have a confidence interval that is drastically different from the other group? Explain why your results would differ.

7.) Carefully explain and summarize your results. Include in your summary any difficulties you had in your data collection and how
outliers (if any) could have affected your confidence interval. Also comment on how well your sampling method was carried out. Do you believe it was truly random or could it have been executed more randomly? How confident are you in your results?

Objectives:
Collecting Data, Analyzing Data, and Confidence Intervals

Instructions:
You can work in groups of 2–4 or work individually. Complete parts 1–7 and turn in a typed report showing all your work. The typed report has to include a cover page listing all group member names, class, class time, due date, and project title. Do not add notes in handwriting to your final report.
Your report will be graded on completeness, presentation of work, and correctness. See the grading rubric on the next page. To get full credit in step 1, you need to come up with a creative sampling method. Think outside the box!