Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My project question is How has prejiduce among people changed over time in the United States (or possibly worldwide also) in the last century and how does it compare now and what is the outlook for the furture? I plan on doing a data mining project and I need a source to get my data from. I also need some ways of displaying this data in graphs, so that I can draw a conclusion. If I can get insight on this I would greatly appreciate it!

Hi specialk,
You might be able to use the hate crime statistics compiled by the FBI:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#hate

As for graphing your data, what sort of advice do you want? There are many different graphing programs available, some for free. Alternately, you can draw your figures by hand.


Chris

Thank you so much for your advice, I am going to use this data perhaps along with additional sources showing other things, such as how diversity has changed within different regions or polls given to Americans on this subject over the last century. I just do not know where to look for reliable data.
As for my graphs I definitly need to do them on a computer. I need to use inferrential statistics not just descriptive statistics (graphs, measures of central tendancy....). If there are any math programs that can help me on that, please let me know, I have not been able to think of a good way to display my data after I gather it.
Again thanks for the input!

You might also be able to find some relevant information on the websites for the US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

You can do some basic statistics and graphing in Microsoft Excel. Do you have access to that program? If not, there are some free programs available on the web that may suit your needs.

I expect that you will have more ideas of how to present the data as you proceed with data collection and analysis, so I wouldn't worry about that right now.