Review of the

6^th Annual AP Statistics Project Competition of the

Southern California Chapter of the

American Statistical Association

Held on

May 21, 2011 at

City of Hope National Medical Center

Duarte, California

The Southern California Chapter of the American Statistical Association (SCASA) is pleased to announce the winners of its sixth annual AP Statistics Project Competition held at on May 21, 2011 at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California. Of the 9 teams which were formed from winning students in the preliminary data analysis 5 were chosen as winners. The following table lists the entries and denotes the winners.

Entries and Winners of the 2011 Project Competition

SCHOOL	Student	Team	Result
Mark Keppel, Alhambra	Philip Mak	1M	Winner
	Robin Tu
	Shannon Rodriguez
	Ashley Yeung
Mark Keppel, Alhambra	Tina Duong	2M	Winner
	Michael Xie
	Roger Tu
	Kimberly Ho
Mark Keppel, Alhambra	Kevin Chan	3M	Winner
	Melissa Chow
	Connie Huynh
	Jack Lu
Santa Ana, Santa Ana	Joanne Nava	8S	Winner
	Michael Jaramillo
	Silvia Nunez
Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills	Eli-Ran Youshaei	9B	Winner
	Andrew Schwab
	Leo Gettleson
	Albert Sung
Mark Keppel, Alhambra	Brian Tran	4M
	Kevin Hui
	Sunny Thai
	Julie Vo
Mark Keppel, Alhambra	Kelly Kwan	5M
	Rebecca Tse
	Brendon Chiu
	Bryan Lam
Santa Ana, Santa Ana	Victor Sanchez	6S
	Patsy Bravo
	Jose Valenzuela
Santa Ana, Santa Ana	Dayan Tolentino	7S
	Alexis Suarez
	Jocelyn Sanchez
	Marisella Silva

PosterComp 2011 Project Winners with Teachers on Stage at City of Hope

Winning teams of the 2011 competition received a $40 cash prize and T-shirts donated by Minitab Inc. All students in the project competition also received a copy of the RSS/ASA’s statistics magazine Significance plus a set of items donated by SAS Institute’s JMP unit.

Judges’ Commendation: The Beverly Hills HS project stood out for its non-standard innovative design.  The control variable was the difference between HS GPA and GPA of the English-only student's foreign language classes.  The treatment variable was the difference between HS GPA and GPA of the bilingual student's 3rd-language foreign language class.  They called these the language discrepancy measures.  They performed a two-sample t-test on this data to see if there was a difference.  The test was statistically significant - interesting. That was their main result. More interesting was the regressions they ran on the English-only and bilingual student GPA paired data.  Both regressions were significant and had clearly different slopes.

Beverly Hills High School, Beverly Hills

Mark Keppel High School, Alhambra

Santa Ana High School, Santa Ana

New Competition Format for 2011

This year the project competition was preceded by a data analysis competition round in which students were required to analyze data from the Census At School initiative which is promoted by the ASA (see http://www.amstat.org/censusatschool/about.cfm for information about Census At School). Students had to obtain random samples of data from two different countries in the international database and perform basic statistical calculations plus regressions. Teachers were also encouraged to engage their class in contributing to the Census At School database by filling out the online survey and using their own class data in the competition. Most results of the data analyses were entered online and computer scored. Additionally the students had to submit a data analysis report which could contain graphics and other supplementary material. The highest scoring students plus some wild card entries were allowed to choose teams for the final project competition round. As seen above a total of 9 teams from 3 schools competed in the project round. The data analysis round was instituted in part to limit the number of entries reaching the project round at City of Hope – an event which attracted which attracted about 80 entries last year and neared the limits of what the venue at City of Hope could accommodate.

Teacher’s Participation

The teachers have a few choices to make when getting their classes involved with the competition. They can have students participate only in the data analysis round although to participate in the project round students are required to have passed through the data analysis portion. Additionally teachers can take advantage of the online survey in the ASA’s Census At School and add their own survey data to the data analysis. While the teachers are not required to accompany their students to the project round at City of Hope most teachers do make the trip.

Regardless of whether they have students in the competition teachers are invited to the teachers’ session held concurrently with the competition. For 2011, the featured speaker was Ms. Mine Cetinkaya - a doctoral candidate in UCLA’s Department of Statistics. Mine gave two talks: one was on her Ph.D. research in applications of small area estimation to air pollution in the Los Angeles basin and the other talk was on her work on OpenIntro:Statistics – an open source introductory statistics textbook. Thanks to the generosity of sponsors Texas Instruments and Minitab Inc. a drawing was held for distribution of door prizes for teachers attending the session.

Teachers’ Session at PosterComp 2011

Left to Right: Cheryl Rife (Santa Ana), Sylvia Leon (Mark Keppel),

Gary Ledger (Temple City), Stephan Madaris (Beverly Hills), Mine Cetinkaya (UCLA)

Participation Levels of Teachers of PosterComp 2011

School	Teacher	DA Round	Project Round	Teachers’ Session
Mark Keppel	Sylvia Leon	*x	*	*
Beverly Hills	Stephan Madaris	*	*	*
Temple City	Gary Ledger	*		*
Santa Ana	Robert Rife	*	*	Attended by spouse
San Gabriel	Sheree Mar	*x+
X Class participated in Census at School Survey. + Most Survey respondents in Census At School

Judges for PosterComp 2011

The judging team was lead by Jason Wilson of Biola University. Other judges included Annamarie Stehli or UC-Irvine, and Rebecca Le and Joyce Fu of UC-Riverside. Each judge individually interviewed and scored every entry to determine the winners.

Judges Annamarie Stehli, Jason Wilson, & Joyce Fu

Judge Rebecca Le Interviews a Team

City of Hope Sponsorship

The City of Hope’s Biostatistics Department has been the sponsoring unit for the AP Statistics Competition since the beginning. The excellent facilities in both Cooper Auditorium where the posterboards are set up for judging and in Platt Conference Center where the audiovisual facilities are used for the teachers’ sessions have been made readily available for the event each year. This has happened in large part due to the line of Chapter leaders who have come from the department through the years up to the current Chapter President Elect Andrew Dagis.

Chapter President-Elect Andrew Dagis chats with a team

Bird’s Eye View of Judging Area in Cooper Auditorium

Tour Guide Begins Tour for PosterComp Students

Lunch is Served Before the Awards Ceremony

For more information about the competition visit the competition website at http://postercomp.sc-asa.org or contact competition chairman Dr. Rodney Jee at RodneyJee@yahoo.com.