Statement of the Problem

I am not a fan of most items that the school serves in the lunch so i usally pack my own lunch.  I was see lots of stuents buy lunch from the line everyday and was curious about whether more people pack lunch regularly or buy regularly.  They are many factors that go into whether someone buys lunch, like not having money to buy evryday, not liking what is served, being too lazy to pack your lunch, and the type of diet you follow.  I decided to do a study to try and determine whether more students at North Olmsted High School buy lunch from the lunchline or bring a packed lunch from their house.

Abstract

The objective of my study was to determine if there was statistical evidence that more people either pack their own lunch from home or buy lunch from the lunch line at North Olmsted High School. I prepared my study by doing background research from the internet. The information I found gave several reasons that are valid for both sides. Like how some people might not like the school lunches or want to save money and pack their own lunch. Or some people might think it's more convenient or like the food served at the cafeteria to just buy lunch from the lunch line.

I collected my data by finding a friend in each lunch period and having them count the amount of people who came in the cafeteria from the lunch lines and the people who came in from the main doors. They would mark each person coming in the doors as people who packed their lunch and people who came in from cafeteria as people who bought from the lunch line. They did this for two days. The data from the days was generally similar and there was no clear determination on whether more people packed or bought just by looking at the data.

After obtaining the data I put it into a minitab and performed a paired T-Test. My p-value was .767 so I fail to reject the null hypothesis that there is a difference in the means of how many kids buy lunch or pack their own lunch at North Olmsted High School.

The study would be more accurate if there better time and resources to collect data because some people may have not been counted due to human error.  Also some people may have gone through the lunch line with their friends and not bought anything.  And also the data was dependent on what was on the menu on the days I conducted the study.  This data should also only be used for North Olmsted High School because data will be different at every school depending mainly on the wealth of the school and the school lunch.