Abstract
We were interested in the gender distribution of McDonalds customers. We began our background research by searching Google for some similar results. We found similar studies to ours such as the comparison of males versus females for fast food and eating out in general. We found studies that compared males and females customers just for McDonalds but they included the drive through as well as dine in customers. Since we could not really stand outside the drive through without being noticed and since we did not know the weather the days we went to observe we decided we would just observe the dine in customers at our North Olmsted McDonalds. Our study was difficult to obtain all the results. At first, we only collected data on three days at three different times but then we realized that we only had an n value of three. This would not be enough to complete our hypothesis test. We decided to go back to McDonalds and collect results in ten minute intervals on three different days. We observed customers on Friday April 20th, from 3 PM to 4 Pm, Saturday April 21st from 10 AM to 12 PM, and on Sunday April 22nd from 3 PM to 5 PM. We could observe the customers from sitting down and not disturbing anyone. We came across the dilemma of who should be counted in the study. We decided we would count all people who came up to the register, regardless of age since we would not know where a good cut off would be for age, and even if we did we would not know the age of the customers. Therefore, our sample size was every person who came up to the register to order food at the North Olmsted McDonalds. After all our data was collected we chose to perform a two proportion z test. We checked our assumptions and carried on to find we came up with a p-value of 0.01134. Therefore we rejected our null hypothesis at the 0.05 level of significance. Our study was in favor of our alternative hypothesis which was the true proportion of men and women who dine in at the North Olmsted McDonalds are not equal. We decided not to extrapolate our data since the demographics at various McDonald’s restaurants would differ. We observed at certain times which would not apply for all times of the day. Our study is best left for just the North Olmsted McDonald’s customers.