Engineering Homework Help

Required Reading/Viewing

The following reading/viewing will provide you with the input you need to successfully complete this assignment.

• Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose Download Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose (pages 86 – 96, 106 -110, and 112 – 113) by Markel & Selber, from Technical Communication 12th ed. This reading addresses how to writing for a specific audience with a specific purpose.
• The Role of Probability and Statistics in the Work of Our Fields – Read the provided literature on the use of probability and statistics in your field (your Department in the College of Engineering). These will be the cited sources you use for this assignment and the next, IDL 1 and IDL 2.
• Why We Cite (Links to an external site.) This brief video from the UNC Writing Center describes why we cite in school. This same reasoning will extend into professional writing.
• How We Cite (Links to an external site.) This brief video from the UNC Writing Center describes how we cite in school. As they indicate, there are many different citation formats, each with a different set of rules designed to enable readers to find your sources.

Additional Resource Hyperlinks

The following reading/viewing will provide you with links to other parts of the assignment and additional professional or general writing resources.

• Review IDL 1 assignment overview if needed.
• Review professional and general writing resources

Input, Analysis, and Critical Thinking

Complete and Synthesize Research – This work is to be done for the Draft phase of IDL 1, but maybe revisited for the Final if needed

For this assignment, you will have two types of input information, a literature review, and descriptive statistical data.

Literature Review. Complete research on the use of probability and statistics in your field. There are sources to get you started for each field on the ‘Role of Probability and Statistics in the Work of Your Field’ page. Each field (your Department) will vary in the use of statistics, but some of the things you may what to find information on include:

• • • The purpose of using statistics in your field. By this I mean, what does it accomplish?
    • What type of input into the work of your field statistics provides. By this, I mean is it used for defining problems, evaluating systems and products, and/or creating products and tools. Some of these may be general aspects of work and some may be specific product types.

Data. Review the data provided in the articles linked below and determine:

• • • What do the data suggest? To really understand these Tables, read their headers, and their footnotes. If there are terms you do not understand, look them up.
    • What part or parts of these data can you use to help convey your handout message? To do this read what is being presented and ask yourself which of the competencies they’ve presented are going to be useful for convincing first-year students that probability and statistics are important. You are required to incorporate and cite some of these data in some way in your document. You will have these sources to work from for this part of your document:

The Four Career Competencies Employers Value Most (Links to an external site.)by NACE Staff

Are College Graduates “Career Ready”? (Links to an external site.) by NACE Staff

Use the article What is Career Readiness? (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.) By NACE Staff. On this webpage, you will find a paragraph under the ‘Career Readiness Competencies’ section that hyperlinks to a description of each of the career readiness competencies. Review them to assist you in determining which ones are competencies you will improve with the work in this course.

Please follow the netiquette guidelines below when engaging in online discussions or emails.

Compose Content

Document Format. Use the template provided for the field (Department) you are in. You may opt to change the header image if you do not like the one I selected, but it must fill the space as the current one does. If you change it you must also change the title font color and bar at the bottom to match the colors in the new header.

• Biomedical and Chemical Engineering Template Download Biomedical and Chemical Engineering Template
• Civil Engineering Template Download Civil Engineering Template
• Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering Template Download Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering Template
• Industrial and Mechanical Engineering Template Download Industrial and Mechanical Engineering Template

Document Audience, Purpose, and Elements

Your document is to persuade incoming freshmen in your field as to the importance of Probability and Statistics to your field (the Department you are studying in). The linked exemplar provides an example of content and the required appearance of the document. The tone of this is to be professional, but accessible. Your writing on the page should flow from one section to the next, BUT it should look accessible, with breaks between paragraphs and headings, so it is not an overwhelming wall of text. You will include the following headings/subheadings:

• A Document Title. Document titles must briefly and precisely indicate the topic of the document. Ideally, it is also something that will catch the readers’ attention.
• Introduction. As with any professional document, the beginning of the document needs to provide readers with an overview of why this is important to them and what it will address. This document will do two things – 1) it will discuss the ways in which probability and statistics are used in your field, and 2) it will use data to support the argument that this is important for student goals in attending college. Both of these aspects should be addressed in the introduction.
• The Use of Statistics in [your field]. Be sure that you have enough information to complete this section. You can look for additional sources to provide specific examples of probability and statistics applications. Each field will vary in the use of statistics but some of the things you may what to find information on include:
  • The purpose of using statistics in your field. By this I mean, what does it accomplish?
  • What type of input into the work of your field statistics provides? By this, I mean aspects of work such as defining problems, evaluating systems and products, and creating products and tools. If you have clearly dividable topics (such as ways probability and statistics are used,) use subheadings to divide the sections.
  • In-text citations are required in this section. No direct quotations are allowed, and the work must be in your own words.
• Probability and Statistics Literacy will Enhance Your Employability. In this section, you will include a discussion of the relevant parts of the data you reviewed above to indicate to students how literacy in probability and statistics is important for their ability to get a job. In-text citations are required in this section. No direct quotations are allowed, and the work must be in your own words.

Extra Credit Option (5 points) – If you opt to include the extra credit it will be part of this section. Details on the extra credit option are listed below.

• Reference List. The document will end with an APA formatted reference list (Links to an external site.). Only include items on the reference list for which you have made an APA in-text citation (Links to an external site.) in your document. However, the required reading for your field/Department must be included. Citations are required any place in your document where you have used the ideas, data, or images of others requires an in-text citation. You may not quote your sources, you must develop your own words.

The hyperlinked example Download exampleshows what the completed document will look like. I have done it for architecture, my field, so as not to favor one department in the college.

Revising and editing, and proofreading: Professional documents must be readable, clear, well organized, and concise. They must also be free of errors. Two approaches may help you with finding typos and grammar and word errors. First, read your work out loud to yourself after having stepped away from it for a while (at least a day). Doing this will help you catch wording errors or omissions and poorly constructed sentences. Second, you should use advanced grammar-checking software to review for grammar, punctuation, or other writing errors. The base paid platform of Grammarly is one option; however, others are available as well.

No quotations and NO plagiarism – They are not acceptable practices in professional engineering writing to use direct quotations. The words in your document must represent your own thinking, based on the information you have gathered. Citing credible sources from which you got ideas gives you credibility and it is required in this work. If you are unclear on plagiarism or are from a region of the world that may think about it differently, review the Plagiarism page.

Extra Credit Option

Extra Credit Option (up to 5 points) For extra credit you may include a presentation of the relevant part(s) of the data set(s) we reviewed for this assignment. It cannot be a copy of the tables, or a table of any type. You will need to generate a different type of graphical presentation of the data that you think will be clear, readable, and interesting to students.

Extra Credit Reading/Viewing (this reading is provided for those wishing to complete the extra credit part of the assignment)

• Watch 3 ways to spot a bad statistic (Links to an external site.) by Mona Chalabi, Data Journalist. In her TED talk, Chalabi provides a lot of information to help you think about both examining and producing good data visualizations.
• Watch The simple genius of a good graphic (Links to an external site.) by Tommy McCall, Information Designer. His talk discusses thinking about how graphics are used to effectively present data.
• Review the different types of graphs that can be used to present data on Data Grammar. (Links to an external site.) I am asking you to look at this to start thinking about the types of graphics that can be used to represent the ideas behind your numbers. With technologies like Visme (Links to an external site.), you can create your own engaging graphics, but you must understand what your most important idea is first. Start thinking about what key point you want to communicate from the descriptive statistics provided for this assignment?