MA 320-8A Stats Unit 4 Assessment – Summarizing Results

Unit 4 Assessment – Summarizing Results

MA 320-8: Statistics

[Summarizing Results]

Summarizing Results

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

The medical definition defines heart rate as “the number of heartbeats per unit of time, usually per minute, and can be determined by the number of contractions of the ventricles – the lower chambers of the heart.” (MedicineNet, Shiel, 2018). The heart is an organ the contracts and relaxes as it pushes blood and refills blood through the heart, stimulated by electrical signals from specialized tissue. Now depending on a person’s individual need, the normal sequence of electrical signals will either speed up or slow down. For example, “the heart will automatically speed up electrical signals to respond to a person running and will automatically slow down when a person stops running and is in a resting position.” (MedicineNet, Shiel, 2018). Now that you know the definition of heart rate, think about the heart rate in men and women while resting and after exercise.

There is formula (220 minus a person’s age) that doctors used to calculate the maximum heart beats per minute someone can achieve. The 220 minus age formula was used to determine individual target heart rates during regular exercise and how hard a person should perform during an exercise stress test. This formula provides a “maximal heart rate – the highest number of times your heart can beat in a minute—is one of the most commonly used measurements in medicine and exercise. But the formula used most often to predict the maximum is also the worst. It tends to overestimate the top level of exertion for younger people and underestimate it for older people.” (Wall Street Journal Online, McGinty, 2018).

ANALYSIS – While researching, an example was found of an actual study that used the formula. According to the American College of Cardiology 63rd Annual Scientific Session, the Mayo Clinic performed as research study that analyzed and compiled data for 25,000 individuals, male and female from 1993 to 2006. The study revealed that “although everybody’s peak heart rate declines with age, the decline is more gradual in women. It also showed that younger men have a lower resting heart rate and higher peak heart rate than women and that men’s heart rates rise more dramatically during exercise and return to normal more quickly after stopping.” (American College of Cardiology, 2017). These heart rates affect us differently when it comes to age, as mentioned in the above example.

In my Statistics class, we are using the Heart Rate Data Set throughout the course to learn about the key components of Statistics. The data set is comprised of gender specific individual values and their heart rates while resting and after exercise. We graphed the data to get the Frequency results for each value.

We also performed a Descriptive Statistics analysis that depicted the all the variables in the dataset, along with the mean, standard deviation and variance. The results are demonstrated in the table and graphs below. When comparing the mean for the values, the MaleRestingHR was lower than the FemaleRestingHR, meaning, that the FemaleRestingHR values fell closer to the measure of central tendency. The variance was significantly lower for the FemaleRestingHR, which signifies that the values varied less around the mean than the MaleRestingHR values. According to the table, the standard deviation for the FemaleRestingHR was normally distributed across the dataset. Outliers were also found, which indicates that the MaleRestingHR values may have some incorrect data within the dataset. I believe this data can be useful because you can create an age variable for each value. If you took a smaller sample from the Mayo Clinic research study and used the variables from the Heart Rate dataset, then you would get similar outcomes relating to the table (Fig. 1-1) and the histograms (Fig. 1-2, 1-3) below.

Figure 1-1

The data collected from RestingHR and AfterexerciseHR histograms with combined male and female values and other articles I read, turned out to be very useful when it came to dealing with stress, heart issues, calories burned, and even age. Even though the histograms do not reveal any of these results, you can see the how they significantly vary.

Figure 1-2

Fig. 1-3

References

American College of Cardiology. (2014, March 27). Heart responds differently to exercise in men vs. women. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 1, 2019 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327100802.htm

McGinty, J. (2018, March 23). A Good Heart-Rate Formula is Hard to Beat. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-good-heart-rate-formula-is-hard-to-beat-1521810000

Shiel, W. (2018, March 6). How the Heart Works. Retrieved from https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=3674