Math 114Q - Quantitative Reasoning

Fall 2007, Section 10

Term Paper

Due dates (subect to change)

• Thursday, October 25. By this date, you should turn in a typewritten description of your choice of topic. This should include preliminary questions you will try to answer and ideas about where you will find the data you need. You should list at least three different sources, and at least one of these sources must be a print source.
• Thursday, November 15. By this date, you must turn in a typed rough draft. This should include a tentative organization of the paper, a list of carefully formulated questions about your topic, some data that you have collected and analyzed, and some possible answers to questions. All sources need to be clearly specified.
• Thursday, December 6. Final submission. The final version of the paper is due today. E-mail submissions will not be accepted. It is your responsibility to proofread and spellcheck your paper.

From: Ethan Bolker 
To: maura.mast@umb.edu
Subject: term paper information
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 12:33:32 -0500 (EST)

Prof Mast and I have moved the due date for the first draft to
Tuesday, Nov 20, from next Thursday. Here's the relevant paragraph
from 

     http://www.cs.umb.edu/~eb/m114/termPaper.html

Tuesday, November 20. By this date, you must turn in a typed rough
draft. This should include a tentative organization of the paper, a
list of carefully formulated questions about your topic, some data
that you have collected and analyzed, and some possible answers to
questions. All sources need to be clearly specified.

Further note: Your paper should include some actual estimates and/or
data analysis of your own, done with Excel. It's not enough to grab
some numbers and charts from the web and paste them in. You can of
course start with data you've found and downloaded, and can use some
graphs you find in addition to ones you construct yourself to support
the particular conclusions you want to draw.

How long should the paper be?

The correct answer is simply "as long as it needs to be to make your argument, not longer." So the actual length depends on the complexity of the questions you are asking.

We expect something like 5 pages, double spaced (but not big type and large margins and almost all graphs). Of course your paper will include some graphs, but most of it will consiste of the words you choose to explain your questions and conclusions.

We are not assigning topics, since the most important part of the paper is that it be about something that you really care about.

What should I write about?

Here are some ideas suggested by classmates last year. (This is not a list for you to choose from, it's a guide as to the kinds of topics that might work.)

We've suggested a range of questions in each case. You need not address them all - they are meant to be places to begin.

• Can I buy a house?

  Pick a community, find out what the range of real estate prices is there. Maybe track how it has changed over time.

  Find out how much a mortgage costs. There's a chance to use Excel here to draw a graph showing how the monthly payment depends on the interest rate and the length of time your mortgage is for. Or you can look for a web site that will do the computations for you. Maybe even one that will draw the graph. The important thing is to find the information and display and interpret it correctly. If Excel helps that's fine, but it's not required.

  How much will you need to borrow? What kind of a down payment can you make? Imagine some predictions about the amount of money you will earn, per year, as time goes on. (You probably won't be working at McDonald's any longer once you get your degree, so you can safely predict an increase in income.) What fraction of your income will/can you spend on housing? Speculate (quantitatively, of course) on the possible benefits of cutting back on some expenses for a while in order to borrow less or buy a better house.

  How might the other costs/benefits of home ownership influence a decision? (For example: cost of repairs and insurance, commuting costs from a house farther away, tax benefits of home ownership, likely increase in the value of your house.)

• Boston Celtics statistics.

  How does the Celtics' payroll relate to whether the team loses or wins? To salaries in the rest of the NBA? To changes in the value of the dollar over time? To star salaries in other sports? Does the range of salaries change over time?

  The data you collect for this project will suggest other questions along the way. The hard part might be limiting the discussion to a few questions you can find good answers to.

• The cost of owning a car.

  You can start with depreciation: find out (or estimate) what you could sell your car for at any age. (That's a little tricky.)

  What does it cost to own your car? Some annual costs are fixed, or nearly so, like insurance. Some depend on how far you drive (gas, tires, and, to a lesser extent, general wear and tear). If you've borrowed to buy the car, you have car payments. If you paid cash, then you're not collecting interest on that money, which you might have put into a certificate of deposit.

  Could you save money by taking public transportation when it was available, taking taxis and renting a car on other occasions? How do zip cars work, and would they suit you?

• Environmental impact of driving.
• Economics of hybrid cars.
• Criminal Justice

  Several CJ majors thought about writing in that area. There are probably good topics available. You might talk with one of your CJ professors. Here are few ideas that occur to me.

  • What is the cost of incarceration? What are the main contributors to that cost? How much of what might be considered the CJ budget for the state or the country go toward supporting prisons? How have these numbers changed over time? How do they compare to what is spent elsewhere in the country or the world?
  • Discuss historical or regional or national trends in some statistics of interest.
• The obesity problem.

  What are the effects of obesity on life expectancy, cost of medical care (for individuals, and relative to total medical care spending), job productivity? How have these changed over time? Can you make any predictions?

• The prevelance of video games.

  How many people (and which people) own video game consoles? What kinds? How often do they replace them? How many hours do they spend? What's the economics? How do console costs and game costs compare? How do these statistics vary over time?

• Gasoline prices

  Change over time (in constant dollars). Per capita consumption. Average automobile gas mileage. Number of miles driven per year (per person, per car).

• Cancer statistics.

  Incidence, mortality, testing and diagnosis. Smoking rates (hard to measure impact because of time delay).

• Credit card costs.

  Personal and societal. How much credit card debt is there? Does it vary by region, or by income level? How much interest is paid? How many bills are settled in full at the due date so no interest paid? How do any of these statistics change over time. Reading the fine print on your bill, or when you're offered a new card.

• Global warming (a hot topic these days).
• The gambling industry. Who wins? Who loses? How much? What are the odds for slot machines, blackjack, poker? Is there any skill involved?
• The statistics and economics of post Katrina homelessness in New Orleans.
• The value of a college degree.

What should the paper look like?

Here are some suggestions for structure (not topics)

• Did something you discovered surprise you? Did you start out thinking one thing and have to change your mind because the data told you otherwise? If so, that's a story.
• Did you find people arguing from the same (or similar) data to reach opposite (or different) conclusions? Or lying with statistics in ways we've seen? If so, you might speculate on their motives. Remember that noting that two things happened does not necessarily mean that one caused the other.
• Write in the first person ("I thought", "I discovered") is OK. You don't need the anonymity of "they say" or "it is known that". (Of course just "I think" unsupported by quantitative reasoning isn't OK.)
• If you can frame your paper so that you actually enjoy writing it then it is much more likely to be a good paper.

Don't just go out and grab some numbers from the internet and paste them into a document. Your paper should tell a story - one you care about. It doesn't need to be long, but it does need to be interesting - we hope compelling. We would like to find out things we didn't know before -th ings that aren't generally accepted as common knowledge. So if you write a paper that says there are more poor people than rich people or that smoking causes cancer we won't be very impressed.

Be sure to acknowledge your sources. We will NOT be happy if pretty much everything comes from wikipedia, or from the first hit in your google search. Data you find on the web that comes from a real publication (rather than existing just on the internet) is generally more reliable. So you shpould acknowledge your sources' sources too: instead of "I found this at such-and-such-a-website" you should be able to say "The data at such-and-such-a-website comes from such-and-such a government publication(or scholarly study, or industry propaganda organization)"

How can I get help?

• Ask us! We are happy to read drafts, answer questions, guide you in choosing your topic, and help you work through the process of writing this paper.
• Go to Academic Support Services. This office (located on the 1st floor of the Campus Center) is there to help you succeed. They offer free writing workshops and free individual writing tutoring.