DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Summary of Spreadsheet Assignment

My spreadsheet consists of data taken from the THEARDA website. I selected seven different countries (mostly European ones) for which historical religious variables that applied to them were examined. These variables were the 'GFI' (Government Favoritism or Religion Index), the 'SRI' (Social Regulation Index), and 'PPP' (Purchasing Power Parity). The first two variables describe a country's openness and level of control over religious matters. The PPP, describes a country's economic purchasing power (as noted by the gross national income per capita). The connection between these variables is to find out whether economic power and level of religious freedom in a country are correlated. To make the numbers make sense, totals in terms of PPP for all the countries were calculated, as well as the totals for the variables aforementioned. The mean, standard deviation, and ranges were also displayed, to get a general sense of the countries as a group. Here's a summary, of the collection of this data:

Mean PPP = $29,882.57

SD PPP = $13,746.67

Range = $47,094 minus $8,589 = $38,505


Though the data is not as clearly conclusive for these variables as hoped for, some general patterns visible are that the higher the levels of control in a country (as evidenced by the date of countries such a Russia and Colombia) the less economic level power or PPP is found. As always, there are some anomalies to account for when conducting data studies. For example, there was no GFI or SRI data information provided for the United States. The lack of this data skews the results, because there is no way then to use that country as a comparison point. I have also generated two graphs that differ in that in one of them the PPP is represented in 'thousands'. The data ranges are then quite different between the two. Overall, it was interesting to experiment with these different variables, taking into account how different countries display different levels of social and economic behaviors.

 

summary of spreadsheet assignment.odt







DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.