Survey Project Take Me Out to the Movies!

1. Survey ProjectTake Me Out to the Movies! Barbara S. Brown Brian Hamilton Elisabeth Thompson Math 595 – Algebra, Functions, and Data Analysis Dr. Emerson-Stonnell June 29, 2010

2. Design: Topic of Study • What upcoming movie release over the next month is the most anticipated? • We had to research upcoming movie releases. Since so many were being released and we had a limited amount of time, we selected the ten movies that we had already seen previews for and anticipated that individuals would have heard about.

3. Design: Topic of Study • The movies we selected are:

4. Design: Population • For our study, our population of interest is all individuals who enjoy movies who are thirteen years old or older.

5. Design: Survey • Due to time constraints and access to potential individuals to survey, we had to use a convenience sample. • Each of us surveyed 20 individuals. • Methods used: • In person • E-mail • Facebook

6. Design: Question • Which movie to be released over the next month are you most looking forward to seeing? • This question will generate numerical data to help us determine the most anticipated upcoming movie release. We will have individuals complete a survey that involves ranking the ten selected movies.

7. Data Collection • Our collection of samples was a convenience sample. • As a result, our data are not representative of the population of movie enthusiasts that we were hoping to poll. So we have selection bias. The selection bias present is undercoverage. This is due to the fact that some parts of the population of interest were likely omitted inadvertently due to our method of selecting participants.

8. Analysis of Data: Avoiding Bias • In an attempt to eliminate bias, we avoided using leading questions and surveyed individuals separately to prevent an individual’s response from being influenced by someone else. • We also alphabetized the movies in order to prevent bias introduced by the order of the selections.

9. Analysis of Data: Numerical Summaries

10. Analysis of Data: Graphs Grown Ups Despicable Me Inception Knight and Day The Last Airbender Salt Charlie St. Cloud The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Histograms Predators Twilight: Eclipse

11. Recommendations • Based on our survey results, both Grown Ups and Despicable Me were movies that individuals were looking forward to seeing with Grown Ups edging Despicable Me out for the number one spot. • Twilight was the movie that our survey indicated people least wanted to see, but the results were mixed.

12. Recommendations • Other questions that we would want to ask if we were to conduct this survey again. • In which age range are you? • 13-20 • 21-45 • 46+ • What movie genre most appeals to you?

13. Recommendations to Improve Results • We do not believe that our sample was representative enough to provide accurate or dependable results. For this reason, we believe that a random sample of the population of interest needs to be used.

14. Recommendations to Improve Results • We also believe that age may influence how people respond to the survey. For this reason, we believe that it may also be beneficial to use a stratified random sample to select the survey respondents. It may also be interesting to further separate the participants by gender to see if males and females respond differently within each age group.

15. Recommendations to Improve Results • Since these movies have not been released and some of the movies are not as well known as the others, we believe that showing each survey participant the previews of the movies before administering the survey would provide the participants with the background information needed to complete the survey.

16. Recommendations to Improve Results • The order in which the movies were presented could introduce bias. To combat this, we would suggest that multiple versions of the survey be created with the movies listed in different orders to control for the effect that the order in which the movies are presented has on the results.

17. And the Winner is . . .