Wake up Fishy

By: Jena and Sadie

For our Chapter 1 Statistics project we decided to survey how many pet fish
the stats class have killed. Our population for this study was our stats class with 26
seniors for simplicity. We found this population was easy to survey in a timely
manner. We then chose to conduct a survey as a way we could efficiently collect our data. Our
variable was the number of pet fish our peers have killed and the individuals are the stats
students. This study is quantitative because it is a numerical measurement based on the number
of fish each individual has killed. We chose to use a simple random sample and surveyed our
whole stats class. Our study is not biased because we simply asked our peers the number of pet
fish they have killed without influencing their answers in any way throughout the surveying
process.
Due to the fact that two of our peers were absent the day of the survey, our study has a
sampling error due to undercoverage. Our class population is 26 students and we only received
24 responses. However, we decided we gathered enough information from our class to come to
an adequate representation of how many fish overall our class has killed.
Our data is representative of the ratio level of measurement because the differences
between our numbers are meaningful and there is a true zero. In our survey the difference
between killing two fish or three fish matters. A placebo, control group, and a blind study will
not be necessary in this study because we ask a simple quantitative question. While conducting
our survey we were not concerned with any possible privacy or confidentiality matters because
we simply asked them how many pet fish they have killed which is usually not a sensitive topic.
To collect our data we sent out a google form to all 26 classmates. One downfall to this
method is taking into consideration that not every student will respond and some may respond
more than once. We had no confounding variables in our study but we had a lurking variable.
The lurking variable is that not every student will answer honestly and that some students may
have forgotten the number of fish they have killed over the years.
In conclusion, we found that about 30% of our class has killed five or more fish while
another 30% has never even had a pet fish. Our lowest percent of 4.2% has only killed a total of
four fish each. We have concluded that our stats class is not very lucky when it comes to
successfully caring for a pet fish. Is it the food we feed them or environment we keep them in?