Project 2 Reflection
First and foremost, this project had been assigned to me during the period of the global pandemic of the Covid-19 virus. Naturally, the first idea that came to my mind when i received this assignment was to use it as a chance to apply the methods of statistical analysis that I have been taught to the datasets of the ongoing pandemic, with the hope of getting some interesting and knowledgeable information about the Covid-19 virus.
The main focus of this study was to analyse some statistics about this virus specifically in the USA. This is because as of June 2020, the United States leads all the other countries in the world as a Covid-19 hotspot. There were some challenges that I faced when planning the execution of this study, and also when this study was actually carried out.
In the preparation phase in which I had to come up with a proposal of this study, I had a tough time deciding which tests were suitable to be performed on the dataset that I had. This is because the variables involved in my dataset were mostly related with a time-series variable such as duration in days. This was slightly different than some of the data that I have encountered in regular exercises. Consequently, I had to spend roughly 3 whole days on deciding which tests were suitable to be carried out on which variables, but in the end I was able to come up with an acceptable proposal within the deadline. This process alone has taught me the importance of analyzing every variable thoroughly before deciding on which tests to perform on them. Without proper analysis, it is very easy to perform unsuitable tests on the wrong variables.
After the proposal comes the execution phase, where I had to execute the case study based on the proposal that I had made. There were plenty of troubles that I faced in the stage such as realizing that some of the tests which I proposed to be perform on certain variables were unsuitable. Which caused me to have to re-plan the whole process. The section in this phase that I found to be the most hectic would be the part for regression analysis. This is because there were many error measurements in this analysis such as SST, SSE, etc. I spent the most time on this analysis out of all the tests that were performed in the study. However, the hard work was all worth while because I was able to draw some interesting conclusions after performing all these tests.
After all the tests have been performed and conclusions drawn, I was still not able to completely understand and interpret all the conclusions that I have drawn form the different tests. It was only when I was presenting my studies that I started to grasp the meaning behind all of the conclusions that I have drawn. For example, I did not realize the margin of difference in mean deaths per day between the top 3 Covid-19 hotspot countries was so significant until I was presenting about it. Hence, the presenting section of this project had also been a great eye-opener for me and I have been able to learn more about my own findings even as I was presenting about them.
In a nutshell, this project has definitely been a huge learning curve for me, in which I got the opportunity to observe firs-hand how different statistical analysis can be applied to real-life matters such as the statistics related to Covid-19 in order to provide everybody with accurate information about the virus. I was also able to determine whether or not some claims about the virus was true. Overall, this project has helped me to improve my knowledge and understanding about the real-world applications of statistical analysis. I hope that I will be able to learn more about the variety of statistical analysis that can be applied to real-world issues so that I will be able to provide some useful studies to the community in the future.