America Counts!

Introduction | Task | Process | Guidance | Conclusion | Questions

Introduction
     The U.S. government has been counting each person in the country since its first Census following independence was taken in 1790. Befitting the first Census of the 21st century, the Census Bureau allowed Census 2000 questionnaires to be completed electronically for the first time. In this project, you will see how data analysis can be used to compare statistics about a state of your choice to other states in the United States.

The Task
You are currently working for the governor of the state in which you live. She would like you to help residents and tourists understand how your state compares to other states in the United States. You are to design a brochure or Web page that compares your state to other states. You may either choose one topic to focus on, for example health as shown in the USA Today article or education as shown in the graph, or you may use a variety of topics for your comparisons. Your brochure or Web page must include the following information:

• the state that you have chosen to research. You do not have to use the actual state that you live in. You may use any state;
• five graphs, tables, or some type of calculations that shows how your chosen state compares to other states. You may use all graphs, all tables, all calculations, or a combination of these presentations of data;
• the sources of the statistics you used to make the comparisons;
• a written description for each graph, table, or calculation explaining what it shows.
• maps, photographs, or artwork that makes your brochure attractive.

The Process
To successfully complete this project, you will need to complete the following items.

• Choose a state in the United States for which you will gather information.
• Find statistics about all states and your chosen state. For help, try these Web sites.
  nces.ed.gov
  www.census.gov
  www.infoplease.com and search for topics you are interested in such as "income and state" or "area and state"
  www.statistics.com
  www.yahoo.com and search for state and government
  weather.yahoo.com
  www.cdc.noaa.gov/USclimate
  
  
• Find out specific information about your state from state Web sites. State Web sites have addresses like this: www.state.al.us, where al is the abbreviation for the state of Alabama. Substitute the abbreviation for the state Web site you want to visit for al.
  
• Find maps, photographs, or artwork to enhance your brochure.
• Be creative. Add some additional data, information, or even pictures to your brochure or Web page.

Guidance
Here are some additional questions and ideas you may want to consider for your project.

1. How do statistics about the U.S. compare to statistics for other countries? For example, how does the population density of various states compare to other countries?
2. What statistics about states may be related? That is, for which statistics do you think you could make a scatter plot showing a positive or negative correlation? For example, is there a correlation between income and size of the state?
3. Are states in one area of the U.S. similar? For example, are incomes for states in the northwestern region of the U.S. similar?
4. Are states with low population density similar? For example, are teacher salaries in sparsely populated states similar?
5. What are some reasons that some states have much greater population than other states?

Conclusion
Here are some ideas for concluding your project.

• Present your project to your class or at a family night.
• Present the information on a Web page. Have other students critique your project and help you to make improvements to your project.
• Write a one-page summary of your project, including what you have learned from researching this topic.

Questions

Lesson 13–5
For your brochure, you decide to research the land area and population of states. The following table shows these data for all fifty states. The land area is in square miles and the population is for 2000.

1. Find the population density of each state. (Divide each population by the number of square miles.) Round to the nearest whole number.
2. Make a box-and-whisker plot and a histogram of the population density data. Which graph do you prefer? Explain.
3. Describe at least two other things that you could do with this data for an informational brochure. Consider pairing it with some other types of data, if you prefer.
4. Suppose you are making a brochure about Rhode Island. Write several sentences comparing Rhode Island to other states using the data in the table and your graphs in part b.

Lesson 14–2
Suppose you want to focus your brochure on education in the states. You have data on the following items: student achievement test scores by state, money spent per student on education by state, average teacher salary by state, average individual income by state, and population by state.

1. You want to make a graph for each set of data, for example a histogram, bar graph, or box-and-whisker plot for each. How many graphs do you need to make?
2. You want to determine whether there is a relationship between any two data sets that you found by making scatter plots. How many scatter plots do you need to make? How can permutations or combinations help you to find this answer?
3. Name two sets of data that you think would show a relationship in a scatter plot. Explain your reasoning.
4. Suppose you make a scatter plot for two sets of state data. How might you compare your chosen state to all states by using the scatter plot?