IA & technology

  2. Exams & Assessment
  3. IA & technology
    4. 30'

Being clear and accurate

This page is full of tips about how to make the best use of technology when you are doing your internal assessment. It is highly recommended that you do use technology to be both accurate and clear and tell help tell the story of your investigation. That said, technology is not accurate and clear by default SO do make sure that you are careful what you do so that you avoid some of the common pitfalls. 

Pros and cons

Here are some of the things to think about when using technology

Reasons to use technology

  • Keep your work organised
  • Produce good looking statistical diagrams and tables for your write up
  • Get accurate statistics done quickly so you can focus on discussing them
  • Make easy comparisons
  • Easily edit your work
  • Huge saving on labour
  • Much more realistic in terms of what you might do in the future.

Things to watch out for

  • Technology will only do what you tell it to.
  • Still work for you to do on making sure that information is clear, legible and well labelled
  • All the different packages have their own issues in terms of appearence. you have to be aware of them and take action accordingly.

Software

A note about software - there are lots of applications available. Here I have focussed on the three that I see most often.

Spreadsheets

Excel (google sheets of apple numbers or other) - Spreasheets are truly brilliant and few us actually know their full porential. You wont get near it for this project. Most of us have access to one kind of spreasheet or another and there are a number of key skills and processes you should use for this project. for organising data, making simple charts and calculating summary stats, spreadsheets are indespensible.

I am cautious about their use for some of the techniques. and think that there are other tools you could consider at that point.

Autograph

This is not free and so perhaps you  don't have access. Depending on time, you can always download a 30 free trial.  Otherwise ask your teachers. I think the statistics unti is still one of the best tools for students doing this course and highly recommend it. It looks good, allows for easy transfer to a publishable file and performs all the functions you need.

Geogebra

This software is so regularly updated, that these videos will need changing! Geogebra is free and can be used for lots of the skills needed in this context (along with untold amounts of other things!).

Excel for organising

This video is just some advice and key skills for keeping work and information organised as you go. Little things that can end up making quite a big difference.

Advice on the following...

  • Organising information
  • Using filters
  • Freezing panes
  • Formatting number cells
  • Sperating work in to different worksheets 

Using Excel to calculate summary data statistics

This video shows how to calculate mean and standard deviation using excel.

Using Excel for Scattergraphs and Regression

I am not convinced that excel is the best tool fo rthis BUT everything can be done  here if you are careful for a few pitfals. Itv also integrates nicely for publishing. Here you can see how we  do all this with excel. For reminders on scatter diagrams and regression, visit this  Correlation and Regression page.

Using Excel for other summary Charts

Making bar charts and pie charts for visualsing information. These should be used carefully, not rpetetitively and only if they help to acheive the goals you ste out. The video goes over some basics of producing these diagrams.

1 variable analysis with Autograph

These videos go over one variable analysis using autograph. It is an excellent pieece of software for this purpose. (See note above about software)

2 variable data analysis with Autograph.

Scatter diagrams, correlation and regression lines. this video talks you through this process with ayutograph and goes over the key points to think about.  For reminders on scatter diagrams and regression, visit this  Correlation and Regression page.

1 Varibale data with Geogebra

Geogebra - Processing one varibale data and producing box plots and histograms

2 Variable data with Geogebra

Processing bivariate data, scatter diagrams, correlation and regression using Geogebra.  For reminders on scatter diagrams and regression, visit this  Correlation and Regression page.

Coming soon....

How to use technology to help with further processes

Chi Squared tests as a further process

Using a spreadsheet to construct a chi squared test whilst doing the sumary parts by hand.

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PMCC as a further process

Using a spreadsheet to carry out calculations for correlation and regression whilst doing the sumary parts by hand.

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MY PROGRESS

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