URBS 502—Descriptive Statistics Assignment

You already know how to access the American Fact Finder and other census data. Go to the census website and select at least 2 variables with at least 50 observations on each variable. The observations should be from the same units (so you can compare the variables in later assignments). And don’t limit yourself to just the Census of Population and the Census of Housing. For example, you might go to the Census of Governments and gather data on the “Price of Government” for 50 cities in Minnesota (data on how much a local government collects in property taxes and fees, and the range or quality of services delivered at that price).

Then write a memo describing the data you collected. The memo should include:

1) Some description of what sort of relationship you expect between the variables you selected (ie., why did you select these variables? What do you hope to demonstrate?)

2) Qualitative presentation of your data:

a) Tabular (if any of your data are grouped, why did you use those groupings?)

b) Graphic (why did you choose this or that particular form of graphic presentation for these particular data?)

3) Quantitative presentation of your data (why did you choose the mean/median/mode? IQR/variance/standard distribution?)

4) Verbal description of your data (don’t just give me the tables and the stats—what does all that gobbledygook mean?)

MSU

Revised 19 October 2006