AP Statistics Experiment

AP Statistics classes are studying inference, the idea of making generalizations about populations from sample results. In class on Monday, March 16, students performed an experiment to determine if long rotor helicopters have a longer descent time than short rotor helicopters. After constructing the two types of helicopters out of paper and paper clips, they did 30 flight trial of each type of helicopter, timing the descents with their cell phones. To determine if there was a difference in the mean descent times, they used the two procedures they learned in class (two sample t-tests and two sample t-intervals) to calculate whether there was statistically significant evidence of a difference.