Assignment One: Randomness

Matthew Dugan’s body temperature by day and time

Summary for assignment 1: Questions 1 and 2

1) What is meant by a “random event” and how does it differ from a “systematic event”?

A random event is something that happens that is a product of chance. Many factors contribute to a random event. We can not predict or control what happens. Certain factors occur and sometimes they affect us, but we never know what factors will occur and what influence they will have. People try to account for events that may occur in order to plan the future, but random events do occur, and can not always be planned for. A systematic event is also known as a bias. When a systematic event occurs, an overall pattern can be seen, the bias affects the data as a whole. For example, when taking your temperature, if you are outside every time that you take your temperature, your body temperature will be cold, since it is cold outside and the mean temperature will be lower than it would be if you took your temperature in a warmer area.  

2) Is it possible to accurately predict a future event?

It is not possible to accurately predict a future event. If your guess was accurate, it would be by chance and the probability of guessing the correct number again would be very low. You can use measures like the mean to try to make an informed guess. Like when taking your temperature, if you took the mean temperature, that number would be closer to the actual number you would get than if you just randomly guessed a number. This is because there are factors that we are not aware of that could cause for the temperature or any event to have an outcome other than what we think it will be.  Using statistical calculations and looking for patterns could help to predict a future event, but the guess would not be one hundred percent accurate, due to the influence of randomness.  

Assignment 1 Chart Attempt 1

Here’s my chart so far. I was wondering if anyone could help me change the legend so it doesn’t say series one anymore. Also let me know if there is anything else I should change. I still have another day of taking my temp so its not complete yet. Thanks, Brittany.