School of Mathematics, Statistics & Computing

Software Engineering

Learning outcome 3:

Assignment Scenario

You have completed your engineering apprenticeship and you are employed in the engineering department of the company as a junior mathematical analyst. You have been asked by your line manager to do the following tasks.

In a Stroop task, participants are presented with a list of words, with each word displayed in a color of ink. The participant’s task is to say out loud the color of the ink in which the word is printed. The task has two conditions: a congruent words condition, and an incongruent words condition. In the congruent words condition, the words being displayed are color words whose names match the colors in which they are printed: for example RED, BLUE. In the incongruent words condition, the words displayed are color words whose names do not match the colors in which they are printed: for example PURPLE, ORANGE. In each case, we measure the time it takes to name the ink colors in equally-sized lists. Each participant will go through and record a time from each condition.

Questions For Investigation

As a general note, be sure to keep a record of any resources that you use or refer to in the creation of your project. You will need to report your sources as part of the project submission.

1. What is the independent variable? What is the dependent variable?
2. What is an appropriate set of hypotheses for this task? What kind of statistical test do you expect to perform? Justify your choices.

Go to this link, which has a Java-based applet for performing the Stroop task. Record the times that you received on the task (you do not need to submit your times to the site.) Now, download this dataset which contains results from a number of participants in the task. Each row of the dataset contains the performance for one participant, with the first number their results on the congruent task and the second number their performance on the incongruent task.

3. Report some descriptive statistics regarding this dataset. Include at least one measure of central tendency and at least one measure of variability.
4. Provide one or two visualizations that show the distribution of the sample data. Write one or two sentences noting what you observe about the plot or plots.
5. Now, perform the statistical test and report your results. What is your critical statistic value? Do you reject the null hypothesis or fail to reject it? Come to a conclusion in terms of the experiment task. Did the results match up with your expectations?

Submission requirements

• Soft Copy
• Hard Copy
  • Due Date:

Your submissions should be no later than (December ,4, 2018) 

• Plagiarizing:

Plagiarism is defined as the presentation of another person’s work as your own. This includes copying from books without referencing the material or copying from another student’s work.

• Late Project

If your project is not submitted on time and you have not received an extension, late project submissions will result in a penalty. A one week late submission results in a 10% deduction on the project marking; while an project submitted between 1 and 2 weeks late will be subject to a 20% deduction on the project marking. Submissions after two weeks will be considered a fail on the project.

• Format for the project:

• Use fonts (only one type) that are easy to read and do not complicate the text
• Line spacing should be 1.5 times
• The assignment should always have the cover page which is given by the instructor
• All details regarding name and signature must be filled in
• Assignments should be done on A4 size paper
• Every page should have a footer which details the assignment name, your name and the page number
• The first page should be the index or contents page with the page numbers
• The next page should have the introduction which is what the assignment is about and what you are planning to write. This can be brief
• CD of the assignment should be submitted.
• PROJECT IS VERY IMPORTANT IN YOUR FINAL GRADING SO DO ENSURE THE DEADLINES SET ON THE COVERSHEET OR BY YOUR INSTRUCTOR ARE MET.

• Grading as follow: