Hello there everyone, and welcome to another blog post!

Despite being sick for the past week, it’s been a busy couple of days trying to catch up and revive myself from the dead. However, I feel way better now, and I’m ready to return to action!

Anyways.. we’ve just completed the 2nd Scimatics project of the year, and I can’t wait to share it with you!

Today I’ll introduce you to the mysterious world of correlations and surveys… and hopefully you’ll have a blast tagging along!

For this project, we learned about correlations and causations. Most importantly, we discovered how these mathematical representations can be misused to convey and spread incorrect information.

For example, two pieces of data may be correlated, and are presented like they also have causation. In reality, they may be influenced by a third party/source, or only be related by coincidence.

I found this subject to be fairly interesting, and surprisingly applicable to my real life (like when I’m scrolling through the endless rabbit hole of YouTube comment sections…)

Oh no, I’m going of topic here…

Anyways, the goal of this project was to find a topic, create a survey, and discover correlations within your data. In the end, we presented a short video in which we explained our findings.

As always, this was another group project, and I paired up with my classmate, Gabi! I would appreciate if you were to go check out her blog as well!

We worked together to collect data from our classmates, and prove causation! In the end, I was very happy with the video we created!

Yet again, we started this project with another mind map! I used procreate to add some images again, and I think it looks better with them!

Here’s mine (I added some images/information after the project as well):

Before moving onto the main portion of the project, we learned how to use Numbers to organize our data. We took measurements of everyone in the class, and then saw whether there were correlations.

Here it is:

Then, we set out to devour information, and create some fancy surveys!

Before we could dive into Google Forms, we made an outline, and decided on our topic. Originally, we were going to see if there is a correlation between music and school work. However, we realized it would be harder to prove a causation, so we went along with school grades and exercise.

You can check out our plan here!

Google forms was difficult at first, but as time went on, we started to get the hang of it! We had a total of 13 topic related questions, and were determined to find people to survey.

In order to get people to do our “voluntary response” survey, I had to confront my fears and send the link into literally every group chat I was in. Although I certainly annoyed some people, we managed to get 39 people to submit answers to our survey!

You can check out our survey here! You’re free to take the survey, but we aren’t using any of the responses anymore (since the project is over now, of course lol).

Since we had the responses, we were able to begin using the data in a graphs. We used the app “Numbers” to analyze and organize our responses into mathematical representations like graphs. After, we began looking for correlations.

In the end, we found 4 correlations, and most of them were affected by causation!

After that, we went ahead and created our presentations. We decided to make ours a video (which would come in handy later, since I became sick, and was unable to come on the day we presented.)

We used Keynote to make a majority of our slides, and then edited them with the voiceover in iMovie. We also added some cool background music as well 🎶

You can see the video here:

Planning and Conducting:

In order to complete this competency, we had to have two correlations, and represent them accurately with graphs in our presentation. I believe we’ve accomplished this competency and possibly extended it as well.

We were able to collect a lot of information with our survey. We tried to ask clear questions which allowed us to understand our data more easily, and represent it clearly in our graphs.

From our survey results, we managed to find multiple correlations amongst the data. We used Numbers to create the graphs, and present our data in a visual manner. With this, we were able to confirm correlation, and extend by finding 4 correlations in total.

However, if we were to do this project again, there are some areas where I’d like to improve. For example, our data only showed weak, scattered correlations. I believe if we had more variety and expanded our audience, we might have gotten stronger correlations.

In the end, I’m proud of our accomplishments in this competency, and I think we did quite well!

Communicating and Representing:

This competency requires us to share our correlations and causations with verbal and pictorial explanations. Yet again, I think we accomplished this competency, and possibly extended it.

We included all of our graphs from Numbers, and, with as much clarity as possible, attempted to verbally explain our findings with our audience.

We also used multiple images (outside of our graphs) to help give a visual explanation alongside our verbal one. As someone who learns easier with visual representations, we tried to make our presentation with equal pictorial evidence.

As well, we tried to explain causation logically, and researched a bit to find factual evidence. To extend, we had multiple correlations that had causation, and we explored all 3 of them with somewhat logical evidence.

I’m most proud of this competency, and with our presentation. I believe we did very well in this aspect of the project!

Applying and Innovating:

As mentioned in past projects, this competency entails use of class time and learning without getting distracted. However, this time, this competency also requires us to use “good ethics” in our surveys. I believe we accomplished this competency.

On a personal note, I believe I’ve used most (if not all) my class time efficiently and without distraction. Despite this, my time spent at home is different. I found myself getting distracted a lot, and my working process was very slow.

Even though I had issues in this, I managed to finish my portion of the work on time, and to the best of my ability.

In terms of ethics, I believe we were fair and mostly unbiased. We gave simple questions and didn’t influence the data. Unless taking the survey ourselves counts as “not good ethics”, I think we accomplished this as well.

In the end, this project was very informing on how correlations and causations have an affect on our lives, and the information we perceived.

Correlation is when two subjects have similar data, but are not directly related or are both affected by the same third party. Although they may show similarities, they do not cause each other.

Causation occurs when those two subjects are correlated as well. However, causation is when they directly cause each other.

This new information teaches us to be wary of how causation and correlation affects data. Other parties can use causation and make it perceive like causation, or it can easily be misread by the audience.

When we learn to perceive data with causation, we can become aware of intent, and when something is correlated rather than caused. In learning this, perhaps we can all grow to become better educated citizens.

(Did I just plagerize our presentation script? Yes.)

(Am I disappointed in myself? Nah, it ain’t plagiarism if it’s your own writing…)

Anyways, that’s the end of this blog post, and I’m very proud of our accomplishments this time around.

Stay tuned for more Grade 9 learning! Maybe the next Scimatics project will include more science this time around… (and some animation)