Data Analysis
For my project, I decided to research data on the enrollment of higher education and the percentages of the actual degrees that have been earned. This is a topic that has fascinated me for a while because during my years of schooling, I have noticed that when orientation rolled around, I had a bunch of classmates, but over the years they had either dropped out or pursued a different path of life instead of going on the same road I was.
The website I used to obtain the information are:
- Enrollment of Higher Education
- https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF
- Percentages of Degrees Earned
- https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF
For my first data analysis chart, I decided to go with a bar graph. This was the easiest and cleanest way to represent the information. According to the graph, high schoolers are the people who obtain the higher enrollment statistics over undergraduate and graduate students. The enrollment of high school students are 384,028 which is significantly larger than the combined total of the undergraduates (total of 356,787). Graduate students have the least amount of people with the enrollment total of 94,013. It is assumed that since most high school systems are free, more students are enrolled because families do not directly have to pay the schools unlike colleges which require you to pay tuition directly to them. It can also be assumed since many people already might have or might not have completed their undergraduate degree, that they do not wish to pursue a higher education due to economic costs.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w2sFJJy449DuKzAT4tH0yLR21-KfcRf3IJ3fFPs13_Q/edit?usp=sharing
On the last analysis chart, I chose to display the data with a pie chart. Pie charts are simple to interpret because it shows how big or small the pieces of the chart are and the viewer can interpret how big the differences are between the sub groups. With this data, I chose to focus on the percentages of degrees students have obtained in their educational career. The sub groups that make up the chart are people who obtained less than their high school diploma, their high school diploma, some college or an associate’s degree, and a bachelor’s degree or higher. From the data represented, people with with less than a high school degree earned the percentage of 10.3%. Those who have obtained a high school diploma are at 30.7%. People who have some college or an associates degree has the highest number at 46.4% and people who have obtained a bachelor’s degree or higher have a percentage of 12.6%. It is clear that the two highest percentages of degree are those with some college/associate’s degree and people with a high school diploma.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GNeHVVETmtNQC3E9032LdIq2qaa8h3wc6rRi2o-d3FE/edit?usp=sharing
From these two data analysis sheets, it is clear that they correlate with each other. The next data analysis sheet that should be done to show the relationship between these two sets of data should be the amount of people who enrolled in the specific subjects and actually completed their schooling to obtain their degrees. This could be represented with a dot chart.
