ACT Participation Proportion and

Mean Score Confidence Intervals

Joseph Griesel
AP Statistics & SDS 302 Sec. II
7th Period
02/13/2015

My idea to collect data about ACT tests results came from a simple question an
underclassman friend of mine asked me: whats a good ACT score? I instantly realized I didnt
have the slightest clue. My own curiosity in addition to the incredibly heavy stigma attached to
modern standardized testing made me interested in finding out more about how others viewed
the ACT. Did many people take it? How did they do? An inquiring mind wanted to know. I sought
to discover about what proportion of seniors took the ACT in the first place, and what the
average score was.
The first step to constructing my confidence intervals was to define my population. My
population for data gathering was the Austin High class of 2015 - the current seniors and my
peers. I next constructed a sample of 30 of my peers. To construct the sample, I first obtained a
copy of the student roster with name and grade level in excel spreadsheet form. I imported this
form into R studio, dubbing the resulting data frame roster. I then created a subset of that data
frame of only those in 12th grade, dubbing that data frame senior. I proceeded to use the
sample function within senior to randomly select 30 students from senior and create my
sample. As I used an unseeded sample function without replacement, there was no possible
influence I could have exerted on the sampling process. The R studio code used to create the
sample can be found in Appendix C.
As I had my sample, I then had to collect data from each individual in my sample. As
luck would have it, I recognized about a third of the names from my sample and searched for
these people to record their responses. Finding the remaining majority turned into a logistical
nightmare. I distributed surveys to hand out to the teachers of these students according to the
students 3rd period teacher, only to find that 9 of the samples 30 had either transferred,
dropped out, been injured, been sent to ALC, or were just absent during my data collecting
period. I utilized all resources available to me to collect as many data points from my sample as
possible. The collected data can be found in Appendix B.

If I was able to collect data from all 30 members of my sample, I believe it would have
been truly representative of the population. However, I was only able to collect data from 21
individuals, shrinking my sample size from a perfect 30.. This introduces the problem of
undercoverage to my sample, and shrinks the sample size to be smaller than what is
considered to be appropriately large sample size for results to be valid. For future surveys and
future data collection, I will not limit my data collection to 30 points so that if things go awry, I will
have more data points to draw upon.
I first calculated confidence intervals for the true population proportion of current Austin
High seniors taking the ACT exam. For reference, all of my calculations for both proportion and
mean confidence intervals are in Appendix A. With my sample size of 21, I found the sample
proportion to be .319. It is important to note that the data collected did not meet all of the
conditions required to create sound one-sample proportion confidence intervals - while a SRS
was taken and N was greater than 10n, n(p-hat) was less than 10. Due to the datas failing to
meet all conditions, the results of the proportion confidence intervals are subject to error.
I found that we could assume with 90% confidence that the true population proportion of
current Austin High seniors that took the ACT exam was between 20.665% and 55.526%. When
we assume with 95% confidence, the interval changes to 17.325% and 58.865%, and a 98%
level of confidence yielded the interval of 13.443% and 62.748%.
Next, I constructed confidence intervals for the mean ACT score of current Austin High
seniors. Unlike the proportion intervals, the mean confidence intervals met all of the conditions.
A SRS was performed, the population exceed 10n, the data was approximately normal as
shown by the linearity of the NQP in Appendix A, and sigma was unknown, so t* was used. This
sample size was 8, giving it 7 degrees of freedom. The sample mean was 25.5 and the sample
standard deviation was 5.632.
I found that we could assume with 90% confidence that the mean ACT score for current
Austin High seniors was between 21.726 and 29.273. When we assume with 95% confidence,

the interval changes to 20.791 and 30.209, and a 98% level of confidence yielded the interval of
19.53 and 31.47.
Through my data analysis, I discovered that it would be a stretch to assume over half of the
senior population at Austin High took the ACT. In addition to that, the average score is likely to
be anywhere within the 20s. During this project, I learned the importance of scheduling data
review and accounting for human error and a cruel, crucial lesson: just because your sample
size is hypothetically perfect doesnt mean your real sample will be.

Appendices
Appendix A
This appendix contains the calculations performed to create my confidence intervals.

Appendix B
This appendix contains my collected data. I collected data via personal interviews,
distributed surveys, a text message, and a Facebook chat.

Appendix C

This appendix contains the R Studio code used to create my simple random sample.
> View(roster)
> seniors <- roster[roster$Grade=='12',]
> seniors[sample(nrow(seniors), 30), ]
Student.Name Grade
133
Bauer, Alexander Gregory 12
124
Barrios, Nicolas Adan 12
1033
Lindzey, Tobin G 12
1644
Sak, Dylan Michael 12
1883 Tisdale, Marlecia Breauntay Rayshaun
2004
White, Allison Kylie 12
844
Hollerbach, Mariella Catherine 12
706
Grant, Colin James 12
778
Hart, Rachel Shannon 12
835
Hockey, Augustus Finn 12
1995
Weeks, Sarah Elizabeth 12
1903
Tovar, Yanira 12
821
Hernandez, Salma Raquel 12
840
Hogan, Jamie Alison 12
1059
Lopez, Manuel 12
214
Brown, Julien D 12
1714
Schwartz, Fernando Jose 12
823
Herrera, Alexandra R 12
1122
Martinez IV, Silverio Jose 12
1509
Ramirez, Martin Adan 12
404
Davis, Oliver Eduardo 12
1551
Reyna, Valerie Nichole 12
414
Dearmond, Adrian Noelle 12
1878
Thompson, Tristan Ronald 12
203
Brewer, Winson Brice 12
1843
Sutherland, Berk Aiden 12
1568
Roberson, Sierra R 12
54
Almazan Melendez, Lesly Yael 12
12
Agarwal, Neel Kumar 12
25
Ahmed, Rehana Kalid 12

12