AP Statistics Project Analysis

In our AP Statistics project encompassing the first semester’s material, we chose to research and analyze the correlation between the number of AP classes Taft seniors have taken in their high school careers and the number of followers Taft seniors have on their Instagram accounts, where the number of AP classes was our explanatory variable and the number of Instagram followers was our response variable. Our group chose this question because we were interested in seeing if there was, indeed, a statistically significant relationship in Taft seniors’ academic schedules and their presence in social media, specifically Instagram. We did not expect to find a clear or obvious relationship in the findings of our sample, as academic rigor and social
After defining the population that we were studying, we printed out an alphabetically-sorted list of all members of the Senior class from Veracross, and assigned an integer, ranging from 1 to 166, to each member of the Senior class. To make the assignment of numbers easier, we simply assigned numbers alphabetically, where, in an alphabetically-sorted list, the first senior would be assigned the number 1 and the last senior would be assigned the number 166. Our group decided that we would sample 50 seniors, so we needed to generate 50 random integers (each representing a senior). Next, we used a TI-84 calculator to generate 50 random integers by using the calculator’s randomInt function, which allowed us to set a minimum random integer (1) and a maximum random integer (166). After using the randomInt function 50 times, we matched each of the 50 randomly-generated integers to its corresponding member of the Senior class. Having selected 50 seniors to sample, we created an anonymous online survey asking each participant in the sample to input two numerical values: “the number of AP classes you will have taken by the time you have finished your high school career”
The number of AP courses taken ranged from 0-12 and the number of Instagram followers ranged from 0-2122. By using MiniTab, we were able to analyze our data thoroughly and through a mathematical lense. For our R^2 value we got 19.2% (.192), which would put our R value at -.443. As for our least-squares regression line, MiniTab outputted that the predicted number of Facebook Friends is equal to 588 plus 42.5 times the number of weekly visits to the Jig (Predicted # of Facebook Friends = 588 + 42.5(# of Jig weekly Visits)). We have attached our residual plot, scatterplot, and spreadsheet of data from MiniTab. For reference, please note that C1 is our variable for # of AP courses and C2 is our variable for # of Instagram