NSCI0005/6 Statistics Coursework 22/23

Coursework Brief

You are working as an analyst in a research lab studying factors that influence degradation of human brain function. Your research supervisor has been sent a data set which they think might contain some useful data, and has asked you to investigate it. The data set was not collected by your team and your supervisor is not familiar with it (this is not such an an unusual scenario!).

You should write a 1000-word report, for delivery to your research supervisor, which inves- tigates the following research question.

What factors influence human synchronisation ability?

The only information you have about the data is described in the section below.

The Data

The data was derived from a human behavioural study.  In the experiment, human partic- ipants were asked to tap along to a given beat and their accuracy was recorded.  Before taking part in the experiment, they were asked to fill in a questionnaire about themselves

which recorded (among many other variables) their age and whether they were smokers. The data set contains the following four columns:

• a unique ID for each human subject;

• the standard deviation of asynchronicity (the smaller the SD, the better they did in the task);

•  age group;

• whether the participant smokes (1 denotes smokers while 2 denotes non-smokers).

The Report

You should think carefully about the purpose and audience of the report. You can assume that your supervisor is familiar with the statistical techniques studied in this module, that they are not familiar with (or interested in) R, and that you do not need to explain the scientific basis of the data.

It is up to you how you structure your report, but it should include the following elements.

Exploratory Data Analysis

Using suitable figures and summary statistics, describe the data set.  This section should introduce the data and motivate the rest of the report by drawing attention to its relevant features.

Think carefully about what to include here. Don’t include every summary statistic and graph you can think of.  Include figures that reveal important or interesting characteristics of the data, that are relevant to the research question, or that help to inform the inferential data analysis in the next section.  You might include a small amount of representative data, but be considerate to the reader:  it would not be appropriate to present large tables.

Inferential Data Analysis

Apply techniques of statistical inference to investigate the research question.  You should perform in this section at least one hypothesis test for which you should quote a p-value and/or confidence interval. You should explain clearly your method in sufficient detail that the reader could reproduce and verify your results.

Think about which hypothesis test would be most appropriate for your research question, and ensure you understand what assumptions are required to apply it.

You  have  been  asked  to  clearly  explain  the  method.   It  would  be  appropriate  to

include  intermediate  calculation  steps  and key  equations.   Do  not include  any computer code nor assume that the reader is familiar with R .

Conclusions and Discussion

Clearly state and critically evaluate your conclusion(s).  To what extent were you able to answer the research question?  With reference to the analysis in the previous two sections, describe the strengths and limitations of both the data and your method.   Justify any decisions or assumptions you have made, where possible with reference to the theory of statistical sampling and estimation.

Do not neglect this section, in which you can demonstrate a nuanced understand-

ing of the methods you have applied.  The best submissions will pick up the top marks here.