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Challenge Team Interim Report

Team Number: 004 School Name: Pecos High School Area of Science: Social Sciences Project Title: The Future of Pecos High School

Pecos High School has had a history of not being able the predict the future student populations.It is important for a school to be able to predict the student population for funding purposes. A high school population can be thought of as a population of rabbits. A rabbit population has a birth rate, death rate, sustainable levels, and predators. A high school population also has variables that can be compared to those of rabbits. We plan on modifying the rabbit population model using variables such as: new enrollments, dropout rate, maximum student capacity, and graduating classes. Using this model, we plan to predict future student populations.

For research pertaining to this project we have looked at various population dynamic models to see how they work. Using these models we modified several variables in order to observe fluctuations of the population in question. The program we are using to write our project is C++. Using C++ we plan to write a program that utilizes past statistics from our school records in order to predict future populations. Our source of records is Pecos High School and the New Mexico Department of Education.

This project is important because it deals with the amount of funding that Pecos High School gets from the state. The school needs to know how many people are enrolled so that the correct amount of funds can be alloted. If too few are reported then funding will be inadequate. If the projections are too high then the school overspends its appropriated funds for students that don't exist. This project would help Pecos High School determine the proper funding for the school.

We expect to see no drastic fluctuations in the population from the past years. Also we expect to see the old pattern of the freshman class shrinking from the first year of enrollment to the senior year.

Team Members

Team Mail

• Nathan Suazo
• Rosealie Salls

Sponsoring Teachers

• John Drabanski

Project Advisor(s)