Estimating Lines and Angles

Estimating Lines and Angles

The problem- We were set a piece of coursework that involved asking

people to guess the line and the angle size that were drawn on a piece

of paper.

We had to collect data, analyse it and then draw up a conclusion.

The method- I drew a line on a blank piece of paper and on another

blank sheet I drew an angle. I then asked 15 girls and 15 boys from

y10 to estimate the line and angle. I didn't know the sizes at this

point so that there was no way I could give people any clues.

When I collected my data it was randomly stratified. This was because

I asked any body in my year that I came across I didn't choose. But it

was also stratified in that I made sure I asked 15 boys and 15 girls.

This is the table I will use to collect all my results on:

The hypotheses- I made three hypotheses and I will try to carry out

two of them if I have time.

Hypothesis 1: I think that more people will do better at guessing the

angle because you can work out 90 degrees and then guess the last bit.

Estimating a line is much harder as it is harder to imagine a

centimetre or say 15 centimetres.

Hypothesis 2: I think that girls will be better at estimating than

boys estimate as girls are normally more careful then boys. They will

probably take more time to estimate, so there estimate will be more

accurate.

Hypothesis 3: I think that older people will be better at estimating

as they will be wiser and more familiar with estimating lines and

angles.

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Method (continued): I gathered all my results then typed them out on

the computer so it could work things out for me. Here are my results:

sex

age

line est.

true line

diff.

% error

abs.

angle est.