The purpose of the Jacobs Award program is to provide encouragement for students to gain an understanding and appreciation of surveys and their uses. To appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of statistics reported in the press and elsewhere, it is important to have a basic understanding of how surveys are taken and how results are produced. In addition, the students must have a teacher or an advisor who will cover material on statistics during the 1997-98 academic year. Students may work individually or in teams of up to four students. A five to ten page typewritten report must be submitted.
Subject matter is the choice of the participants.
The students must collect original data. A copy of the data and questionnaire must be enclosed with the project report. Entries become the property of the sponsors and cannot be returned. Two examples of data that students might collect are expenses associated with automobiles and money earned in part-time jobs held by classmates. Judges will be statisticians in the Washington Statistical Society.