Week 1 Signature Assignment: Choosing a Topic

The purpose of the Signature Assignment is to have you work with real-life data to answer a real-life question using the tools, technology, and skills of MTH/220. In the first week, you must develop a question that can be answered with numerical data and that spans over at least 10 years. For example, "How has the population of the world changed over the past 50 years, and when will the population be unsustainable?"

Here is a list of possible sources to find your data:

• Healthcare Data
• Educational Data

• Criminal Data

  1. Select type of table under Law Enforcement or Incarcerations
  2. Select year
  3. Then select the type of data you are looking for from the dropdown menus and click on Excel. The table will automatically download on your computer.
• Mortgage Data

• Census Data (Population, economy, business, education, employment, health, housing, income, trade)

• UN Data (income, trade, religion, health, poverty)

• Health Data
• Globalization, Health, and Agriculture Data

• UCR Data (crime)

You can either choose a topic from the Student Topics and Questions List or you can create your own. If you chose to create your own, you must obtain instructor approval. You may choose to find data elsewhere (if not listed above), but if you do, you must get the data approved by your instructor. It is very important the data you collect meet the following requirements:

• It has data from a trusted/peer-reviewed source that is numeric per year
• You can collect at least 10 data points (data over at least 10 years old)
• Your question can be answered with the data.

In a Microsoft® Word document containing 30 to 45 words, write the topic/question you are addressing, where you plan to find your data (even if it is one of the above sources), and why you chose this topic. Your assignment will be graded with