Description
Essay Exam 2 is the second major written analysis paper for this course and is to be a complete linear regression analysis. The concepts and methods to be used for this paper come from the Week 9 and Week 10 video lectures and chapter 13 of the textbook. While Essay Exam 1 followed more of a traditional and universal essay style, Essay Exam 2 is a technical paper focused on data analysis. A typical format for such an essay is to break it into distinct parts: 1. The title page – Follow the link below for desired format – MLA Title Page Format (Links to an external site.) 2. An abstract – directly following the title page. It is fine to simply write “Abstract” at the top of the page then give the abstract as a paragraph below. Follow the link below for some guideline on how to write a good abstract – Abstract (Links to an external site.) 3. The introduction – In the introduction you explain the basic idea of the relationship between the variables. This part usually requires some research. You need, for example, to give a brief historical overview of the big bang theory. Where did it come from and why was Einstein so opposed to it? Why did Einstein refer to the “cosmological constant” as his “biggest blunder?” In the introduction you should explain what we would expect to see for the slope of the regression line if the universe is actually expanding. Ultimately the introduction should culminate in a statistical hypothesis about beta, the true slope of the best fit line. 4. Results section – In this section you give the scatter plots and other statistics such as the p-value and coefficient of determination. The results section should contain interpretations and explanations. What does the pattern in the scatter plot reveal about possible relationships between the variables? 5. Discussion section – In this part of the essay you explain how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Or if there are pieces that don’t fit, a pattern in the residual plot perhaps, then you explain how and why they don’t fit and what the implications are from the piece not fitting. The discussion section is where the statistical issues and limitations of the data are discussed. Are there outliers? Leverage points? 6. The conclusion – Is there a statistically significant relationship between the distance between galaxies and the recession velocities? Explain your reasoning.
