Garys Car Sale Coursework

Maths Coursework

Factors that affect the second hand value of a car

Contents page

1. Introduction 3

2. Types of sampling 4-5

 Random sampling

 Systematic sampling

 Stratified sampling

3. Bar graph and Pie chart 5-6

4. My chosen method of sampling 6

5. Scatter diagrams 7-17

 second hand price and age

 second hand price and mileage

 second hand price and engine size

6. Cumulative Frequency 18-35

 1st set Ð'- second hand prices of the sample of 40 cars and individual car makes

 2nd set Ð'- age of the sample of 40 cars and individual car makes

 3rd set Ð'- mileage of the sample of 40 cars and individual car makes

 4th set Ð'- engine size of the sample of 40 cars and individual car makes

7. Box and whisker plots 35-41

 1st set- second hand price of the cars

 2nd set- age of the cars

 3rd set- mileage in the cars

 4th set- engine size of the cars

8. Histograms 42-53

 1st set- distribution of the second hand price of the cars

 2nd set- distribution of the age of the cars

 3rd set- distribution of the mileage in the cars

 4th set- distribution of the engine size of the cars

9. Standard deviation

 Age

 Mileage

 Second hand price

10. Price depreciation 54-55

11. Conclusion 56-57

12. Evaluation

13. Useful for

14. Sample of 100 cars 58-61

15. Sample of 40 cars 62-64

16. Car advertisement 65

Factors that affect the 2nd hand value of a car.

Introduction

I am doing an investigation based on the prices of used cars. I have been given a database of 100 cars. I plan to use many different statistics methods such as pie charts, bar charts, scatter graphs, cumulative frequency curves and box and whisker plot because it is much more easier to understand the information if different types of statistics methods are used. I will describe and explain the many graphs I will have created from the data that has been provided for me. Scatter graphs will mainly look for the relationship connecting two factors. I will be explaining each step I take in this project and giving a reason for the steps that are being taken.

I am going to look at the relationship between the age and price of used cars because in most cases, I know that the older the car, the cheaper it is, unless it is a vintage car that has been maintained every once in a while. The price and its affect on mileage and engine size is another factor that I will be looking at. This is because the mileage can affect the state of the car and the engine size gives us an illusion of the power of the car.

I will be comparing the graphs to see the affect the price has on the factors. I think that these factors are important because they are the main factors that any person would look at to judge the car they are buying. Age is an important factor because the older the cars are, the worse state it is in, unless it has never been used. Mileage is an important factor because if there is lots of mileage then the car will be cheaper (this can be seen on page ). The engine size is an important factor because I've noticed that the size and price of the car goes by the largeness of the engine size (this can be seen in page ___). Also, government have said that the owners of cars under 1000 c.c. will be able to pay less road tax. This shows that smaller cars are cheaper because they emit less CO2.

My hypothesis has been made from looking at these important factors and noticing patterns that can already be seen form the database (see page ). I have also talked to people about their purchase over a new car., as well as looking at car advertisement, which tells us a lot of details on the judgement of cars by people (see page __ for an advertisement). Therefore my hypotheses are:

1. The older the car the lower the second hand

2. The higher mileage the lower the second hand prices

3. The larger the engine size, the higher the second hand price

4. The higher the new price the higher the 2nd hand price.

These hypothesises will be tested by the observation of the scatter graphs. They involve looking at the gradient of the line of best fit, which will be able to show us the rate of depreciation. By using cumulative frequency, I'll be able to present the information visually, which will enable me to figure out other information. The distribution of the cumulative frequency and the box and whisker plot will show the large/medium/small spread of the distribution of the values (which in this case are age, price, mileage and engine size).

Although the database only consists of 100 cars, I will choose the most common cars that will make up my sample of 40 cars. In order to find the 40 cars I need for my project, I will use a suitable sampling method. I believe that the negative point of the database is its small population of cars, which is not as much number of cars as I have wanted.

I will not be choosing car makes such as Lexus and Bentley because there are very few of then in numbers, which