~ Statistical Decision Making ~

Although I had taken AP Statistics in high school I opted to not take the AP Exam, and therefore received no credit for MATH 171. However, I was glad that I had to take this course again. This class taught me how to successfully study for math tests, which was something I had no idea how to do previously. Knowing how to do something and understanding it are completely different things, and this class made me understand the steps of Statistics.

We applied the math to situations that some may face later in life such as in finances, and made sense of the numbers in terms that could be understood by anyone. We were assigned multiple reports, which required mathematical thinking as well as turning numbers into text. At first, I found it challenging as I had never written about math or explained an answer before, but after the first two I feel as though my math skills have been strengthened because I was forced to understand the material.

I have attached one of the reports we did as my artifact for this class, as it shows how we analyzed and interpreted data from a survey on social security spending. In it, you can see how I was asked to provide a written explanation, as well as a visual one with graphs. This will benefit me later in any class I need to make a graph, as I explored the best websites to do create them on and was able to figure out of to manipulate them to show what I needed them to. I hope to continue to have this enthusiasm towards math in any classes I take in the future, and challenge myself to push towards success in  future math classes like I did in this one.

Individual Report, Emily Mothersbaugh, March 23, 2018