What are some of the different kinds of projects?

We DO NOT intend for you to pick from this list (which includes some less-than-exciting topics). We're trying to give a sense of the breadth of possibilities so you can design a data collection project on a topic that interests you. Here are some ideas:

  • Observing conversational styles. Timing how long it takes various objects to fall different heights (not too exciting, but it forces you to think hard about measurement protocols).
  • Simple experiments on self and others (for example, systematically varying eating, sleeping, or studying plans)--this is hard to do in a short time, though.
  • Studying friendships and relationships: what time of year do romantic relationships start, how many close friends do people have, how long do friendships last, and so forth.
  • Evaluating the accuracy of weather forecasts, sports betting odds, or point spreads.
  • Trying out one of the classroom demonstrations (for example, the age-guessing demonstration) on students not in the statistics class. In this case, the students should vary the experimental conditions (for example, trying it on individuals, groups of two, and groups of three, to see to what extent larger groups guess more accurately).
  • Analyzing quiz and exam grades for a different course (assuming the instructor of the other course is willing to supply the data). This idea (along with the evaluation of weather forecasts and sports odds) is not a data-collection project, but maybe it is close enough if the analysis is done well.
  • Measurements--have people guess their measurements and then compare to actual values. Students doing this as a project can compare and see if different groups of people have different sorts of biases.
  • Measuring waiting times for buses/trains and queue lengths: students gather some data and try to see the mathematical relations here.
  • How many books are on the library shelves? Similar sampling problems: frequencies of letters in different languages … Taste-testing: for this to be a good project for a group of students, they would have to do it on many experimental subjects or have some clever twist.
  • Survey questions on some interesting topic--for example, ask students where they met their friends, how many close friends they have, whatever. It can be hard to get random samples here. One possibility is an email survey, or an in-person survey in dorms. You should avoid the convenience sample of, for example, students walking out of the student center.
  • A survey of some subpopulation of particular interest to the group of students: for example, math majors, or athletes, or Catholic students.
  • Psychological experiments: for example, one semester, a group of students had the idea of putting up a ``No Eating or Drinking'' sign in the library study room, where eating and drinking were indeed prohibited but often done anyway. They counted the number of students eating and drinking under the ``no sign posted'' and ``sign posted'' conditions, with several replications (15-minute periods) of each over a few weeks.