Conducting Your Own Research Project

How do you actually "analyze" data? There are so many ways that it wouldn't be possible for us to adequately discuss it here. Instead, we'll outline a few methods and we'll be adding a section on "Math" in our textbook. We'll also describe to you how we analyzed each experiment we conducted in the "Results" section of each experiment.

When you analyze your experiment you'll be looking for a way to prove your idea or hypothesis. You'll be looking for:

1. a "yes" or "no" answer, i.e. "yes, the ball speed slows down after the bounce";
2. a trend in your data, i.e. "we noticed that the angle after the bounce was much lower for the French Open ball than the US Open ball";
3. some type of classification, i.e. "we categorized (sorted) the stroke patterns for the men versus the women players";
4. note an observation, i.e. "our wind tunnel test showed how back spin and top spin fly differently through the air";
5. quantify your results with numbers, i.e. "25% of the players did the following".

So your analysis could include:

1. sorting and classification;
2. counting;
3. taking averages, means, standard deviations, or other statistical analysis;
4. comparisons.