Julianna Beathard Period 3 9-26-11 Linear Regression Report Every year, approximately eight million children are born

with a disability, and in 2004, my brother, Zachy, was one of them. Zachy was born with a brain malformation that has left him unable to perform many of the tasks of a normal seven year old. For example, Zachy can't walk or talk and all his food has to be specially prepared. Basically, he is treated as a newborn baby. I often think what he would be like if he was a normal kid, and how different my life would be. The two variables that I am doing my project on are the percent of babies born with a disability in a year versus the average annual income per person in a country. There are a couple reasons why I chose these variables to research. One reason was, of course, because of Zachy. He is such an important person in my life, so I wanted to explore his condition compared to other babies in the world. I often wonder how this can happen to Zachy when we live in the United States, a country that has access to some of the best medicines in the world. I would think that because we are so much more technologically advanced than many countries, there would be less disabled babies born. I then think of all the disabled babies born in countries that are not as progressed as the United States, and don't have access to such advanced medicine. This makes me curious whether or not the wealth of a country determines the frequency of disabled babies born. Another reason I chose to research these two variables was because I love babies! When Zachy was born, he was put into the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). I would visit him often, and would see all the other sick, little babies, many of whom had some sort of disability. Ever since then, I have wanted to be a NICU nurse when I get older because something draws me to caring for the disabled babies.

To satisfy my curiosity, I collected data comparing the percentage of babies born with a disability in a year to the wealth of a country. I assume that the wealthier a country, the better healthcare system they have. This means better medicine and more advanced technology, which also means less disabled babies born. The wealth of a country is determined by the average annual income per person. After I collected all the data, I created a scatter plot to plot the data points.
$90,000 $80,000 Avg. Annual Income per Person $70,000 $60,000 $50,000 $40,000 $30,000 $20,000 $10,000 $0 4 Venezuela Poland Libya Brazil MX Russia S. Africa Thailand Peru Iraq Mongolia India Niger 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 % of Babies Born with a Disability each Year USA Australia Canada Italy Spain Saudi Arabia Norway

8.5

As you can see, many of the less developed countries, such as Niger and Iraq, have a higher percentage of disabled babies born in a year and a lower average annual income per person. However, the more developed countries, such as Italy and Canada, have a lower percentage of disabled babies born in a year and a higher average annual income per person. This is evidence that countries that are more advanced in terms of wealth are less likely to have a higher percentage of disabled babies born in a year. This result is likely because they are better equipped with new medical technology that will help reduce the number of disabled babies born.

This graph further supports this relationship between these two variables. From these variables, I can make a linear regression equation which will model the data I collected. This equation is y= -9861.17x+73,870.94, because a=-9861.17 and b=73870.94. The slope of the equation is -9861.17. Because there is a negative sign in front of this number, it means that the slope is negative. With respect to my data, a negative slope is consistent with what I would expect. It implies that as income, represented by the y axis, decreases, the percentage of births with disabilities, represented by the x axis, increases. The y-intercept is the point on the y axis where the linear regression line crosses the y axis when x equals 0. The y-intercept of my equation is 73,870.94. This means that when x (percentage of disabled babies born) equals 0, the y-intercept (average annual income per person )would equal $73,870.94. This supports my expectations that the higher the income, the lower the percentage of babies born with disabilities. The r-value, or correlation coefficient, is the main result of a correlation. The r-value of this graph is 0.52. The closer the r-value is to one, the more relationship there is between the two variables. The line that is drawn on the graph will also be straighter. Because the r-value of this graph is 0.52, this means that there is somewhat of a relationship between the two variables. There are many predictions that can be made about this graph. My first prediction was that if the average annual income per person in a country was $90,000, then the percentage of babies born with a disability would be -1.64. But this is not possible to have a negative percentage of disabilities. This number was determined by substituting 90,000 in for y on the linear equation, and then solving for x. This further supports my hypothesis that regardless the average income per person, there will always be some percentage of disabled babies born. The second prediction I made was that if the percentage of babies born with a disability in a year was 4.9, than the average annual income per person would be $25,548.61. I formulated this number by substituting

4.9 in for x on the linear regression equation, and then solving for y. The last prediction I made was that if the average annual income per person was $20,000, then the percentage of disabled babies born would be 5.5. I came up with this by putting 20,000 in for the value of y and then solving for x. There are many careers that could use this type of analysis. The main careers that would use this would be medical doctors and scientists. These doctors and scientists could travel to the less developed countries- the countries with a higher percentage of babies born with disabilities and a lower average annual income per person. There, they could study what the people of that country were doing differently or were not doing compared to the people living in a more developed country. They could use the information they gathered to possibly come up with a solution to lower the percentage of babies born with disabilities. Doctors and scientists are so important in our global society today for a numerous amount of reasons. Not only do they heal people, take care of the sick and prevent the spread of diseases, but they also are very important leaders in our society. As shown in the graph, the more developed countries have a lower percentage rate of disabled babies born in a year. However, the graph also seems to indicate that no matter how wealthy a country is, there will always be a minimum level of disabillities in the population. This level appears to be in the 4.3% of the population range. So, as far as my curiosity about my little brother goes, it seems that he must be in that 4.3% of disabilities that occur regardless of how advanced the medical care is in our country.

Citations: March of Dimes. March of Dimes Foundation. 2011. 9-22-11. < http://www.marchofdimes.com/mission/globalprograms_birthdefectsreport.html>.

Kids Health. The Nemours Foundation. 2011. 9-22-11. <http://kidshealth.org/parent/system/ill/birth_defects.html>.

CODI. Jennifer Weir. Western New York Regional Traid Center. 9-22-11. <http://codi.buffalo.edu/graph_based/.demographics/.statistics.htm>.