Disseminating Quantitative Results — Excel to Web

Due Friday Friday, Dec. 1

Goals of the Assignment

  1. Analyze the responses of four hundred and seventy-eight (478) fourth, fifth, and sixth graders to a questionnaire that asks them what their goals are and asks them to rank four factors that contribute to popularity.
  2. Once you have done the analysis, you will convert your tables and charts to include in an html document that explains your conclusions.

The Excel Spreadsheet

You can find the responses to the questionnaire in an Excel workbook called Project3Data.xls This starting file can be found in my /home/samba/fac-staff/mleblanc/universal/public/ folder, which is available via the tempest/phoenix server. You should copy this file to your area and rename it to Project3YOURNAME.xls

This workbook already has four worksheets contained in it: Introduction, Analysis, Raw Data, and Workspace.

Your Excel Workbook

On your Analysis Worksheet, you should create a table like the one below and enter formulas in the appropriate cells to complete the table.

WHOLE SAMPLE

Grades

Sports

Looks

Money

Average

Ranked 1

Ranked 2

Ranked 3

Ranked 4

After you have the calculated the values, compare the average of each category to the number of students who ranked the category first. You should notice something interesting.

You should also include a pie chart based on the table that shows the percentage of students who ranked each category first.

In addition to building a table and pie chart for the entire sample, you should also build similar (additional!) tables and pie charts which show how various groups ranked each category first:

  1. What are the percentages of each category ranked first for BOYS vs. GIRLS (use a bar graph for this case).
  2. What are the percentages of each category ranked first for Rural Girls vs. Urban Girls
  3. What are the percentages of each category ranked first for those whose goal is to Make Good Grades vs. those whose goal is to Be Popular vs. those whose goal is to Be Good in Sports

In the end, you should have eight tables and eight charts.

NOTE: You will need to sort the data according to the various criteria. Be very careful to copy the data to the Workspace worksheet and sort different copies of the data. Otherwise, your previous tables may be incorrect. For example, if you have sorted the data by Gender to create the tables for Boys and Girls, and then you INCORRECTLY sort the same copy of the data for the Urban and Rural tables, then your Boys and Girls tables will no longer be accurate. This can really make you sad.

Your Web Page

In your Project folder of the WWW folder on the www3(tempest/phoenix) web server, you should create a file called project3.html that contains your analysis of the data. You should link to this page from your homepage.

In addition, on your project3.html, you should explain the questionnaire and explain any discrepancies in the data or why the data is as you expected. For example, you should compare the responses of boys and girls and point out any surprising results or explain why the results are just what you expected. You should also look for similarities among the groups and try to explain why you think they may exist (e.g. look at the groups that ranked Money and Grades roughly equal. How could you predict that from these groups?)

Keep in mind that people who view your web page may know nothing about this assignment, so you will want to be sure that your page is completely self-contained and can stand on its own without your spreadsheet.

In addition to your explanations, this HTML page should contain all eight of your tables and the corresponding pie/bar charts.

What to turn in

You should put a copy of your Excel workbook in my drop box in the Excel Project Goes Here folder found at:

AppleShare - ACC/ResNet Services - AC Server - Guest - Course Materials — Computer Science - LeBlanc — Universal Machine

Name your file Project3YourLastName.xls (please! Include your last name in your excel filename).

Grading

Your project will be graded out of a total of 30 points with the following breakdown:

Correctness of Excel formulas -- 8 points
Formatting of Tables and Pie/Bar Charts -- 3 points
Validity of Analysis -- 7 points
Quality of report content -- 7 points
Appearance and quality of html -- 5 points


  Maintained by: Mark LeBlanc
  Lab content by: Tommy Ratliff
  Dept of Math & Computer Science
  Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts