ENGINEERS AND SWING DANCINGClayton

8/19/2014

THE QUESTION:

Are Engineers attracted to Swing Dancing?

WHY THIS QUESTION?

It seems like almost everybody at a swing dance is an engineer

Is this because I live in Boston?

MY HYPOTHESIS

I believe the percentage of engineers at a swing dance is significantly greater than the percentage engineers in the general populace

THE VARIABLES

Whether or not a person is an engineer Whether or not a person is a swing dancer

POPULATION

The population surveyed is active lindy hoppers in the Boston area

Data for the general population is provided utilizing online sources

DATA COLLECTION

Lindy hop data Data collected over one week at the three major swing dances in the

area Most of the dancers at each dance were surveyed The survey asked for information about where the participant lived,

what they did for work, as well as some other questions related to years dancing, education, and gender

Population of the area data Data collected using a Census search tool that can be found at

http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml Based off 2012 census data

POSSIBLE BIAS

Not everybody was surveyed at the dances I only was able to survey people at the dances, missing

people who were not there that week Only one type of swing dance was covered Census data was from 2012 (the most current available)

ORGANIZING THE DATA

The survey initially yielded 230 data points, but the places where the candidates lived were all over the place.

I chose to work with the top seven locations of participants: Arlington, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Medford, Newton, and Somerville.

This narrowed my data points down to 135, and made it possible for me to gather necessary data from the US census website.

TESTING THE HYPOTHESIS

The null Hypothesis (H0) is that the outcomes of the sample group (the swing dancers) will be relative to that of the general population (census statistics)

The alternative Hypothesis (HA) is that the outcomes of the sample group (the swing dancers) will be significantly different from that of the general population (census statistics)

A Goodness-of-fit Chi-square test will be used to analyze the data

The level of significance will be: alpha = 0.5%

INITIAL ANALYSIS – BAR GRAPHStudents / Unemployed / Unable to categorize: 0000Management Occupations: 0010-0430

Business and Financial Operations Occupations: 0500-0950

Computer and mathematical occupations: 1000-1240

Architecture and Engineering Occupations: 1300-1560

Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations: 1600-1965

Community and Social Service Occupations: 2000-2060

Legal Occupations: 2100-2160

Education, Training, and Library Occupations: 2200-2550

Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations: 2600-2960

Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations: 3000-3540

Healthcare Support Occupations: 3600-3655

Protective Service Occupations: 3700-3955

Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations: 4000-4160

Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations: 4200-4250

Personal Care and Service Occupations: 4300-4650

Sales and Related Occupations: 4700-4965

Offi ce and Administrative Support Occupations: 5000-5940

Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations: 6005-6130

Construction and Extraction Occupations: 6200-6940

Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations: 7000-7630

Production Occupations: 7700-8965

Transportation Occupations: 9000-9420

Material Moving Occupations: 9500-9750

GOODNESS-OF-FIT CHI-SQUARE TEST

The p-value is less 0.05%, therefore we can reject H0 and accept HA

Observed survey outcomes

Probability of Expected outcome (based off of census statistics)

Expected responses (obs-exp)2 / exp

Yes 20 0.013 1.755 189.6752279No 115 0.987 133.245 2.498255282Sum 135 1 135 192.1734832

p Value: 7.382 x 10^-4

Are you a swing dancer?

RESULTS

Based on the bar graph, we can see that the percentage of engineers at a swing dance is far greater than the percentage of engineers in the general population of the cities used in this test.

Combined with the significant results from the Goodness-of-Fit Chi-Square test, we can say that my hypothesis is correct: The percentage of engineers at a swing dance is significantly greater than the percentage engineers in the general populace!

REFLECTION

Positive experiences Discovering an alternate test for my analysis was a huge relief The conversations I was able to have with curious participants were

wonderful. Most of them are very curious to learn about my results

Negative experiences Realizing that the chi-square test for independent variables did not apply! Parsing the census data

Surprises! Additional data provided very interesting information: like19/20 of the

engineers in my sample were male Most of the engineers only have a bachelors, yet I assume they make

twice as much as me

MOVING FORWARD

I wish I could conduct this study in multiple cities to find out if the results are similar.

Now I know there is a statistical significance in the amount of engineers, but that does not explain why.

I think a proper study would also cover the other forms of swing dance.

I am definitely going to analyze the data for other results as well that will be useful to the swing scene (How many newcomers in a week? How educated are swing dancers? What is the average amount of time a person has been a swing dancer?)