This week you’ll get a headstart on your Week 9 Assignment – Data Analysis and Visualization by searching for and summarizing a newspaper article that highlights a real-world problem that could be solved through statistical data.
To successfully complete your discussion post, include the following:
- The title of the article, the date it was published, and a link to the article.
- A bullet-pointed summary of the purpose of the article and the problem it is trying to solve.
- A brief explanation of how the article uses descriptive statistics to communicate information, conclusions, or solutions found in the study.
Be sure to respond to at least one of your classmates’ posts.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Note: The instructions for this discussion are the same as Step 1 in your Week 9 Assignment.
To begin, visit one of the following newspapers’ websites: USA Today, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or Washington Post. Select an article that uses statistical data related to a current event, your major, your current field, or a future career goal. The chosen article must have a publication date during this quarter.
Example topics may include:
- Elections/exit polls
- Award shows (Oscars/Emmys/Grammys)
- Sports
- Economy/job market
- Gender equality
The article should use one or more of the following categories of descriptive statistics:
- Measures of Frequency – Counting Rules, Percent, Frequency, Frequency Distributions
- Measures of Central Tendency – Mean, Median, Mode
- Measures of Dispersion or Variation – Range, Variance, Standard Deviation
- Measures of Position – Percentile, Quartiles
EXAMPLE:
Example Post-Please Use as a Guide
Hello Everyone,
Summary of the purpose of the article and the problem it is trying to solve:
- The article intends to show the availability of the job market even though there is a rise in people quitting.
- It provides a breakdown of job openings and available fields and highlights the increase and decline of the different job categories.
- Provides a percentage of how many were laid off or fired in September 2021.
- The article’s goal is to solve the question of if the economy is creating new job openings.
This article uses measures of frequency to show the percentages and differences in the job market. As more people are leaving their jobs to find employment elsewhere, the number of workers finding new jobs increases. In the USA Today website article, “Over the past 12 months ending in September, U.S. employers have added 73.3 million workers, and 67.7 million people have left or lost their jobs. That means the economy has added 5.6 million positions†(Bomey, 1). The use of employment data represented in the article clearly defines the increases and decreases in the job market for the listed categories. This data can but utilized by people searching for a job to pick a field to search. For example, the article states that “job openings increased 141,000 in health care and social assistance†(Bomey, 1). So a health care professional not happy with their current employment may be more inclined to apply for a position at another clinic or hospital knowing the hiring rate is high. Someone in real estate will be least likely to search for new employments since there is a decline. This data highlights that the job market is at a point where getting a new job is not a difficult as it was during the height of the pandemic last year, and that are opportunities for me to advance to a new career or company.
Source List
- Nathan Bomey. November 12, 2021. Americans quit their jobs at a record pace in September as openings remain steady. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/11/12/job-openings-quit-great-resignation-layoffs-hiring-september-2021/8584287002/.
