The Southern California Chapter held its fourth annual Project Competition for AP Statistics Students on May 30 at the City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, California. The competition attracted 47 teams from seven schools—a 47% increase in entries from last year.
Head judge Jim Bentley of the University of Redlands coordinated the pool of 26 judges, made up of college professors, graduate students, and statisticians from business and industry. The judges conducted poster session–style interviews of the teams, and each team received three interviews. The competition chair, Rodney Jee of Fair Isaac Corporation, announced 10 winners at the awards luncheon, which immediately followed the judging. Winning teams received a $40 cash prize and T-shirts donated by Minitab.
For the first time, the chapter split the competition from its pairing with the long-standing Career Day to allow the two events to develop separately and focus on their respective core participants. This permitted the competition to hold its first formal teachers’ session for those teachers who came with their students. While the students were being interviewed, the teachers benefited from talks given by two chapter members. Lee Kucera, an AP Statistics teacher at Capistrano Valley High and past judge for the ASA’s Project Competition, gave a demonstration of Texas Instruments’ Nspire calculator. Jessica Utts, who is at the University of California, Irvine, and has been formally involved with the AP Statistics exam from its beginning, showed how Minitab can be used for teaching.
Winning Entries from the 2009 AP Statistics Project Competition
- Examining the Accuracy of the Windows XP Installation Time Prediction and How to Improve It, Samuel Carson of Scripps Ranch High School, San Diego
- Does Birth Month Affect Test Scores?, Yvonne Tat and Carmen Tan of Temple City High School, Temple City
- Predicting Hotel Room Rates Based on Occupancy, Cody Aros, Joyce Chuang, Stacy Suh, and Emile Young of Troy High School, Fullerton
- Movie Statistics, Michael Bina and Brenda Arianpour of Beverly Hills High School, Beverly Hills
- Herbaholics Anonymous, Ben Manko and Michael Best of Capistrano Valley High School, Mission Viejo
- The Cost of the Future, Yarden Eisenberg and Weihang Zhao of Beverly Hills High School, Beverly Hills
- Shopping Trendencies, Lahari Surapaneni, Connie Jao, and Nakia Sarad of Troy High School, Fullerton
- Are Teenagers Now Truly the Technological Generation?, Nicole Tague and Francis Vu of Capistrano Valley High School, Mission Viejo
- The Randomness of Roshambo, Jean Guo and Nina Gao of Troy High School, Fullerton
- M&Ms, Jenny Fang, Brandon Wong, Amy Zhang, and Johnny Zhou of Temple City High School, Temple City
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