Final Product PresentationWe are finally here, week twelve! This project has occurred over the course of the semester and to think that it is coming to an end feels weird. We have been doing this project for so long that it will feel odd not doing blog posts and collecting data. This project has showed me a lot about time, and about efficiency. By looking at different GPA's from people of all different interests, grades, hobbies, and commitment levels we have learned that if you work hard, you can achieve your dream GPA. Some of the highest GPA's came from people who participated in four or more extracurricular activities. Out of those people one person participated in eight extracurricular activities and one person participated in six extracurricular activities. Imagine how busy these people must be week in and week out. That could support our conclusion that extracurricular activities and sports can teach you time-management and efficiency. By just looking at the data, it is hard to tell whether the number of extracurricular activities that one participates in would have an effect on their GPA or not. It is also hard to tell whether or not sports would have a positive or negative effect on their GPA or not as well. During the presentation of our final product, we plan to have different graphs that break down all of our data. Variables that will be expressed through graphs will be: GPA, number of extracurricular activities, whether or not they play a sport, grade level, and how they describe themselves. We also plan to have clear answer to the questions (based off of our data) "Does the number of extracurricular activities that one participates in affect their GPA?" and "Does playing a sport, help or hurt one's GPA?". Moving on After this ProjectThis project has taught Zach and I that no matter how busy we are, that, if we work hard enough we can achieve our dream GPA. Now obviously, there is a limit to the amount of stuff that you participate and involve yourself in during the school year, but we now know that having a busy schedule and a good GPA is possible. People tend to have the perception that the people with the highest GPA's don't play any sports or they don't participate in outside of school activities; I would say that this is completely false. In basically every case, the people with the highest GPA's had a busy schedule and they did play a sport. Now, every person's work ethic is different, and if a person has a bad GPA it may just be that they don't put a lot of effort into their studies. Or a person with a really high GPA may work crazy hard and do a lot work for extra credit. There are a lot of variables to break down and look at that we have collected over the course of this project. You also have to take into consideration, did these people tell us one-hundred percent true information? Some people might have stretched their information or added a couple of points to their GPA for fear that we would judge them or for the project to not be anonymous. When we present our project though, everything is going to be anonymous. We are going to leave all of the names out, so all you see is numbers and statistics. As this project comes to a close and as our lives move on, we can apply this project to our lives and remember the lessons of time-management and time-efficiency that we learned.
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Analyzing our Collected DataWe have finally finished our data collection for our project. We have collected data from sixty people, which is a good amount of people for us to make a chart with to analyze the data. We plan on making a bar graph, but we are in the process of figuring out what kind of bar graph we are going to make and how we are going to distribute the data. We think that we will have two axis' that represent two different variables, but then have multiple graphs that all represent different things. We aren't completely sure what variables that we are going to use yet. The things that we will definitely include are their GPA in some shape or form and the number of extracurricular activities that they participate in. We could also include what grade they are in, what sport they participate, and how they described their work ethic. We might include these factors in order to prove a point about time-management and efficiency, on whether sports affect your GPA more, or how the number of extracurricular activities affect your GPA. During our presentation we plan to describe the data that we have collected, describe our bar graph that we have created, and provide our conclusions. We plan to answer questions such as what the correlation with playing a sport and your GPA was, the correlation between the number of extracurricular activities that you participate in, and the correlation between grade levels and a person's GPA. Also, during our presentation we plan to provide an answer to the questions: "Does the number of extracurricular activities that you participate in, teach you to be more efficient with your time or does it cause stress and anxiety?" and "Do people who play a sport have a lower GPA than people who don't play a sport?". These might be questions that you think are easy to answer without data, but a person who is busier than somebody else can do one of two things: they can have good time-management and be good with their time or they will fall behind in school and procrastinate. On the other hand would a person who participates in less activities have better grades because than those who have more time or would they procrastinate due to video games and watching TV. We want to provide an answer to these questions with data to back it up. The main thing though, is that we are going to leave out names and everything will be anonymous. We are excited to get to our final product, and we will be closer to that next blog post!
What we are Learning Through this ProjectZach and I have surveyed over sixty people now, and with this project starting to wind down, we plan to get our end total of people to an easy number to work with and then for the last two weeks put together our charts and graphs. As we have constantly said, the data collecting process has been a lot harder than we previously thought that it would be. We have done our best to survey people throughout all different fields and interests. One of our biggest problems was surveying people over a variety of grades. We surveyed plenty of tenth graders, but we struggled to find eleventh and twelfth graders to survey. With that being said, our data will obviously be of mainly tenth graders but we did our best. Even though we are going to keep all of the information that we collected confidential, we collected a lot of interesting data and we learned a lot about people. For instance, we realized that some people are really busy or that they participate in sports and activities that we didn't know they participated in. We surveyed mainly our friends, but we did branch out some. I also learned how busy some people's lives really are. You have a total new appreciation for time when you realize how many extracurricular activities some people participate in, and the fact that they still maintain a stellar GPA. Zach and I have a totally new appreciation now for people who have a great GPA, and who are very busy day in and day out.
As you constantly hear learning good time-management in high school is essential, because once you get into college, you will be shell-shocked. A lot of people can get by in high school very easily with little to no effort put in, but I have heard countless stories of people getting to college and being overwhelmed with the amount of time that they have to put into their studies. This project can inspire people to learn ways to be efficient with your schoolwork and how to have better time-management. We still have a ways to go in this project, but as the data collection comes to an end and as we start to put our final product and graphs together, we need to actually learn from this project and find ways to be a better student. Zach and I have learned so much from this project, and I can't wait to find out how the last stages of this project turn out. We will be using google excel spreadsheets to create graphs and tables and we will have an analysis of the data. We will also have an answer to the question (based off our data) on whether extracurricular activities and sports hurt or help your GPA. A Less Productive WeekThis week we did not get a ton of people surveyed, it was only six people. This is not a ton of people, but at least it is some. As of now, we have fifty-four people surveyed. This is not exactly where we hoped to be at the beginning of the project, but one-hundred people is a lot harder than we thought that it would be. As I have talked about in previous post, one-hundred people really doesn't sound like that many people, but once you start collecting data and once you start with the project you realize that it is a lot harder to find one-hundred people to survey that you are comfortable asking what their GPA is. Zach and I have decided, that, surveying one-hundred people is unattainable and we have realized that we aren't going to reach that goal. We have decided to survey as many people as we can and continuing to survey until we have to start to rap up our project, but we do want to end on a number that is easy for us to calculate data with. As we start to conclude our project (as we only have three weeks left after this one), we plan to have different data tables that show the different parts of our research. We also plan to have an answer (based off of our research) on whether extracurricular activities hurt or affect your GPA, we also plan to see if playing a sport hurts or helps your GPA as well. The New Data CollectionsOut of the new people that we surveyed, four people's GPA went up; one person's GPA stayed the same; and one person's GPA went down. All of the people except one this time around, participated in two or more extracurricular activities. We surveyed two eleventh graders and the other four were tenth graders, everybody who we surveyed this time around also played a sport. The thing is though, it is hard to analyze a set of data if you did not collect a lot. Therefore, it is hard to analyze data collected from five people, so next week, check back into our blog as we will try to survey around ten people.
Moving Toward Our End GoalOver this past week we have surveyed eleven more people for our project. Out of those eleven people, six of them their GPA went up. Out of those eleven people, four of them their GPA went down. Finally, out of those eleven, one of them their GPA stayed the same. An interesting thing happened during our last sequence of data collection, two of the people surveyed participated in zero extracurricular activities. One of the them, their GPA went down and one of them their GPA stayed the same. There is not enough data yet to say what no other extracurricular activities do for a person, but we will need to keep an eye out for that. Out of these eleven people only three of them did not play a sport. We also had two people who described themselves in their own words as ¨lazy¨. We have not had a person describe themselves like that in a couple of data collections. A lot of people in this project lately have been describing themselves as ¨hardworking¨ and it honestly leaves you to think, are they really hardworking or is that just their response to us because they do not want anybody to think that they are not hardworking. Moving OnWe have forty-eight people surveyed so far and we are moving along in our goal. We had originally set our end goal at one-hundred people by the end of this project, but we thought about changing it to either seventy-five or maybe even fifty people. We surveyed more people than we would have thought this week so we are going to wait and decide on a decision at a later date. It is a lot harder than you think to find one-hundred people yet alone fifty people that you are comfortable surveying
The Data Collection Moving AlongWe have surveyed nine more people since the last time that we have surveyed. Out of those nine, four of those people's GPA went up and five of the people's GPA stayed the same. The surprising thing is that, no one's GPA went down. In all of the stages that I have collected people's data there has not been a single part where none of the people's GPA went down. The interesting thing is, that all of these people played a sport, whether this is giving support that people who play sports that their GPA would go up I'm not sure, but this is an interesting point in our research. Also seven out of nine of those people said that they were hardworking. This is an interesting point in our research and this is the first blog post where our collected data has pointed toward whether sports and extracurricular activities help or hurt your GPA, and we could also say that if you play a sport, this would help and increase a person's GPA even more. The Next StepThis puts us now with 37 people surveyed and this makes us think, would surveying fifty people or seventy-five people be a more attainable and easier achieved goal than one-hundred people, we aren't sure. We might change our end goal, but we aren't sure. We would like to achieve our end goal of one-hundred people, but this is a lot harder to attain than we thought that it would be. It is a lot harder to find one-hundred people that you are comfortable surveyed than we thought that it would be. We are just going to see how the next two weeks of data collection comes along. For now, this next upcoming week we will aim to survey around 10 to 15 people. As the project will come to a close, we plan to have a description of the data distribution toward the end. Stay tuned next week for the next blog post!
The Failed PlanOver spring break with all of the time that we had we had planned to survey some people. That did not happen though. I was at the beach from Sunday to Thursday morning and then over the weekend before school started back I had a basketball tournament that lasted most of Saturday and pretty much all of Sunday. I got really busy and I forgot to survey people, also I had forgotten to do my blog over the weekend as well, so that is why I did not have a blog up. The Plan Moving ForwardThe plan this upcoming weekend is to survey people, I do not have really major plans so I want to survey as many people as possible. Currently, we are at about 30 people who we have surveyed, but if we are going to achieve our goal of 100 people we do need to speed up our efficiency. Stay tuned this weekend for another blog update!
Spring BreakOver Spring Break, Zach and I plan to survey more people. We have surveyed 28 people so far and we have a lot more to go to get to our goal of 100 people. We plan to survey probably around 20 people over the break and this would put us at 48 people which is right where we would need to be. Our project does not require a ton of work until we have all of our data collected and so collecting data is all that we need to do over the break. Further Data AnalysisOur data shows so far that people who said they "Did what is not needed but not extra" or that they were "Lazy" probably means that whether or not if they played a sport or how busy they were, their GPA if it did drop might not have dropped as much or not have dropped at all if they were to work a little harder. Another surprise so far is the effect that sports have had on people's GPA. So far people who play sports, about half of them their GPA goes down and half of them their GPA goes up. Even though we never explicitly stated it, we expected sports to hurt your GPA the most and that has been half- right, but also half-wrong. I am interested to see if and how this trend changes as we collect more data.
Collecting More DataZach and I have surveyed 13 more people since this Wednesday. Out of those 13 people, 6 people's GPA went up, 4 people's GPA went down, and 3 people's GPA stayed the same. Out of those 6 people whose GPA went up, 4 of them played a sport. Out of the 4 people whose GPA went down, 3 of them played a sport. Finally, out of the 3 people whose GPA stayed the same, 1 of them did not play a sport. Unlike the last time that we collected data the correlation between playing sports and a person's GPA does not seem to be totally negative this time. Playing sports seemed to have a positive and a negative affect on a person's GPA this time, but the negative affect had a greater impact but not by much. Edit to Our Data Collecting SpreadsheetWe have also made edits to our data collecting spreadsheet as well. We have recently added whether or not a person played sports or not and a person's explanation of their work ethic. We thought by adding these two categories, that when we are putting together our final product we will be able to show a more distinct answer to the question "How do extracurricular activities affect your GPA?".
No data collectionsThis past week was kind of hectic with finishing up the Modernization Project, then having to present it to the class, and then the Unit 1 test so we have no new data. Our goal was to survey 100 people and currently we only have 14 surveyed. We need to make sure and survey people all over grades 10-12 (we can't survey 9th grade due to them only having one GPA), people of all different classes, class levels (STEM, Honors, Standard, AP), and people who participate in different kinds of extracurricular activities and sports. I plan to text some of my friends over this weekend and get data concerning their GPA and their extracurricular activities, but as of this week so far, we don't have any information. The struggle with this project so farThe hard part about this project so far has been setting time aside to do this project. This project doesn't necessarily require a lot of work, you just have to survey and collect data from a lot of people. This can sometimes be a little awkward to just ask this question randomly and you can kind of push off surveying people and forget about it a lot as well. That is the hardest part about this project, is getting yourself to keep surveying people and keep collecting GPA data, the work itself is not.
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AuthorI am active in my church, clubs, and sports and I a lot of times will find it hard, to manage my GPA with the extra things that I want to do. Archives
May 2019
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