Investigating Factors that Influence the Costs of Used Cars

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Investigating Factors that Influence the Costs of Used Cars

The aim of this project is to investigate which factors influence the

costs of second hand cars. The makes we were looking into include

Ford, Peugeot, Renault and Vauxhall.

To aid us with our research, we were given a bank of secondary data of

one hundred and ninety nine cars. Along with these cars, we were given

nine variables for each car; colour, engine size, petrol/diesel, year

of manufacture, mileage, cost, preliminary cost, make and model. We

later had to add an age column for each.

We have been asked which features make most difference. My predictions

for which makes the most difference are as follows:

FACTOR IMPORTANCE RANGE

1. Age most important factor 1yr-16yrs

2. [IMAGE]Mileage 1200-150,000

3. Cost 375-132,500

4. Petrol/Diesel Petrol/Diesel

5. Engine size 1,000-2,500

6. Year 1989-2002

7. Model 106-Vectra

8. Make Ford-Vauxhall

9. Preliminary Cost 6,000-20,020

10. Colour least important factor Black-Yellow

Looking through the data, I can see that it is not perfect. There are

many missing fields of data, and I had to remove one rogue piece of

data, being a Renault Laguna. I knew it was not right from my general

knowledge of cars, the price being too high.

I will draw up scatter graphs, histograms and cumulative frequency

curves (for cost compared with the whole population's age followed by

individual Makes)

to try and distinguish any correlation's (patterns) in the cost

distribution.

Fortunately, the median is not affected by extreme values so the box

plots will be fine, as will any other cumulative frequency curves.

Most variables would affect the cost, but by how much remains to be

seen.

I am now satisfied that results from my sample will represent the

population as a whole.

1st Hypothesis

I have said that age is the most important factor and so I will try to

explore it further.

[IMAGE]What I think will happen is-

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