MAT 104 (Clinton Hines)

Project 1:

This is the first in a series of project assignments throughout the term, culminating in a final PowerPoint presentation.

The goal of this first project is to identify a social issue of your choice, statistics related to your issue, and the data from which the statistics were derived.

A social issue is a problem that affects many people within a society.  I ask that you focus on social issues for this project primarily because they tend to generate the type of studies that work well with the learning outcomes of the course.

I will demonstrate my expectations of each project assignment with a social issue of my own choosing.

Complete the following:

1. Identify a social issue of your choice and briefly describe its importance.

2. Find at least two different statistics related to your social issue that are reported by an online media source.  (Provide the link.)

3. Describe the media source and its possible motivation for reporting the statistics on your social issue.

4. Identify the study (or studies) from which the statistics were derived.  (Provide link(s) to the report(s).)

5. Describe the cases and variables observed in the study and identify each variable as categorical or numerical.

1st: find a news source via Google

       a. search using your social issue key terms, such as "gay marriage" or "homeschooling"

           AND "a recent study"

       b. keep in mind that the quote marks are necessary to use around distinct phrases

       c. if you are not successful in finding results, try alternate search terms, relying on synonyms
          and related terms

2nd: track down that study by:
      
        1. If you are lucky, the study will be referred to by name in the news article and there will   
            even be a direct link to it!
            
            For example: https://www.newsweek.com/christian-religious-leaders-support-gay-marriage-more-congregations-1830073
 

        2. That is unusual, however. Usually, the news piece just refers to the article with                              incomplete citation info. If that is the case for your news piece, then note down all of the
            information you can find in the news article about the original scholarly article, including:

                  a. the names of the authors
                  b. the university or organization affiliated with the research
                  c. the date range the article was likely published

             For example:  https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/trans-children-sense-their-gender-identities-young-ages-study-suggests-n1107266

        3. Take that information to the next step