Transcript Observing Patterns in Bus Arrivals, Departures and

Observing Patterns in Bus Arrivals,
Departures and Boardings Over Time
An ASPC statistical experiment project by Manly Selective Campus
Year 9 students George Morgan, Ryan Foo and Jonathan Barrett
Aim & Hypothesis
Aim
• To observe measurable patterns in school bus arrivals, departures
and boarding times over the period of two weeks.
Hypothesis
• Buses take longer to load on Fridays
• Buses arrive later towards the start of the week, i.e. later on
Mondays and Tuesdays, and earlier towards the end of the week,
i.e. earlier on Thursdays and Fridays.
Method
• All school buses arriving at our school bus stop had their arrival,
boarding and departure times recorded in the period from 3:15PM
to 3:50PM on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons
over the two week period starting on 18.8.14 and ending on
29.8.14. Wednesday afternoons were excluded as school is
dismissed 50 minutes earlier due to school sport, meaning some
people catch public buses instead of the regular school buses.
• The bus times were recorded on laptops, using a spreadsheet to
easily input data and have it pre-formatted and tabulated.
• These afternoon bus recording sessions were taken in shifts, with
equal amounts of time on duty for each team member.
Method
• After all the data was recorded, it
was organised within a master
spreadsheet, with the data being
analysed and graphed. A bus log
from one of the days can be seen
on the right.
• From this statistical analysis, we
could distinguish whether our
hypothesis was true or not and any
other patterns that arose.
• These results, analysis and
conclusion were finally written up
in to a presentation.
Buses Arriving at School Bus Bay – 10x Speed
Statistics by Day of Week
Graphs of Average Loading Time by Day of
Week and Early By Time by Day of Week
04:19
03:36
02:53
02:10
01:26
Monday,
02:53
00:43
Tuesday,
02:32
Thursday,
02:51
Friday,
04:00
00:00
Monday
Tuesday
Thursday
Day of Week
Friday
Average Early By Time by
Day of Week
Average Time Bus Was Early By (min)
Average Time Taken to Load Bus (min)
Average Loading Time by
Day of Week
02:10
Friday, Early
by 00:54
01:26
Tuesday,
Late by 1:19
00:43
00:00
Monday,
Early by
00:25
Monday
Thursday,
Early by
01:28
Tuesday
Thursday
Day of Week
Friday
Results
• The statistics show that the average boarding time was 4:04 min and
3:56 min for the first and second Fridays respectively, and the graph
also reflects this. This contrasts greatly with all the other days, where
the average boarding time never exceeded 3:00 min.
• The statistics also show that earlier in the week, on Mondays and
Tuesdays, buses arrived later than later in the week, on Thursdays and
Fridays. On average, buses arrived only 28 seconds early on Mondays and
1 minute and 19 seconds late on Tuesdays. This contrasts with
Thursdays on Fridays, which on average were early by 1 minute and 28
seconds, and early by 54 seconds respectively.
Conclusion
• From the results shown on the previous slide, it appears that our
hypothesis is most possibly correct, with a clear and discernible
pattern in the statistics and accompanying graphs.
• Therefore, we can say that buses have a very likely chance of
taking longer to load on Fridays and arriving later towards the
start of the week and earlier towards the end of the week. To get
a definite answer, we would have to run our experiment for a
longer timeframe and record the buses’ times over a month or
more.
Possible Improvements
• To improve the reliability of this experiment, the accompanying
statistics and graphs, and patterns found, the monitoring and
recording time period could be widened to encompass a much
longer timeframe, e.g. 1 month, 3 months, 6 months or even a
year.
• Additional patterns could also be found with the extension of this
experiment to include mornings or other bus stops.
Credits
• A huge thank-you to Mr Harris, the project’s supervising teacher –
without him, this project would not have been possible
• The background image for this presentation was sourced from the Wikimedia
Commons, entitled "Wan Chai Pier Bus Terminal 2009" by WiNG - Own work.
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia
Commons – available at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wan_Chai_Pier_Bus_Terminal_2009.jp
g#mediaviewer/File:Wan_Chai_Pier_Bus_Terminal_2009.jpg