This document provides instructions for a research assignment to analyze household electricity or telephone usage over a 2 week period. Students are asked to choose between analyzing electricity or telephone usage, record daily usage amounts or tariffs, perform calculations on the average usage over the 2 weeks and estimated yearly average, and draw and analyze a graph of the usage data. Examples of completed electricity and telephone usage graphs are also provided.

1. Research Assignment
You now need to discover how much electricity
your household uses or how many minutes
your household spends on the telephone.
Therefore you need to do some research.
Steps:
1. Choose between telephone or electricity.
2. Record the tariffs/amounts billed for each day
for 2 weeks.
3. Do the calculations.

2. Do the following calculations
 At the end of the 2 weeks, you need to:
○ Identify what measuring units was used to calculate
the usage.
○ Calculate the average amount for the 2 weeks.
○ Estimate what the yearly average would be.
○ Determine the total cost of usage for the 2 weeks.
○ Draw a graph of the usage (days on the x axis and
number of minutes or kWh on the y axis).
○ Write down a few observations that you can
conclude from your graph.

3. Example of a telephone
graph
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
550
600
650
700
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Cost(R)
Days
Graph indicating telephone tariffs over a period of 2
weeks

4. Example of an electricity graph
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
26
28
30
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
ElectricityUsage(Kwh)
Day
Graph Showing 2 weeks of Electricity Usage during April in a
Household of 4