3.1 Pose the question
The initial problem and planning: The key here is to convert the problem into a statistical question that can be addressed. Often there is not one single question to be posed but a series of questions and, in this situation, the problem may be presented in the form of a hypothesis and then we develop questions that help address the hypothesis.
Hypothesis (noun)
‘A supposition in general; something supposed or assumed to be true without proof or conclusive evidence; an assumption.’ (OED, 2024)
A note about proving a hypothesis. In statistics, this is not something you do! This is because when working with ‘real’ data there are exceptions that can often be found, or we do not have all the information to give a definitive answer. The data you collect will provide evidence that will help you decide to support or reject the hypothesis.
Activity 4 Thinking about collecting data
Returning to the village play park example, your hypothesis might be:
There are enough children in the village to make it worthwhile building a play park.
Write down some ideas about how to gather and organise information that will help you test this hypothesis:
- What data do you need?
- How will you collect it?
- Who will you collect it from?
Comment
Here are some thoughts for the planning stage; you may have thought of other considerations.
What data do you need?
You are interested in finding out if building a play park in the village is worthwhile. Given that children are the main users of play parks you are likely to be interested in the ages of the population of the local village.
How will you collect the data?
You could perform a survey or ask a questionnaire or use data that has already been collected such as census data. A census counts the population of a nation, state, or other geographic region (National Geographic, 2024). It records information about the population’s characteristics, such as age, sex, and occupation. In the UK, a national census is taken every ten years in the year ending with a 1.
Who will you collect the data from?
Author - Can you provide answer for this questionWill it only be residents of the village that use the play park?
You might want to consider finding out about children who visit the village regularly such as friends of others in the village or grandchildren of village residents. If so, what would you consider ‘regularly’ to be, perhaps more than once a month? Maybe there are other nearby villages whose residents might make use of the play park. A simple starting point is to say that you will ask all the people in the village how old they are, and whether they would use the playground. One method would be to drop a leaflet into every house with a link to an online survey.
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