Analysis (Right click & press Print or File & Save As) Click me to return to menu

Analysis is a process that goes on right the way through the project, although quite a bit of it needs to be done after research. The main idea is to look at all the information that you have gathered and put it into three 'piles' very useful, useful and useless. You can discard the useless but say why it is no good to you. Remind the examiner that you did look and not all of what you found was good.

Now look at the rest of the information you have gathered. Try to put it into areas like 'people', 'materials', 'measurements', 'finishes', 'market products' and so on. From here you might say who was the tallest and smallest people (very important if you were making a chair), which materials were the best of the bunch you investigated and why, look at all the measurements involved and pick out those which are very important (for a chair you might get the average size of a range of chairs to give some idea of your final sizes), say which of the finishes would be most suitable for making the work (paint perhaps if it was outside polished if it were to be inside). From your market products pick out the best features and say why you like them.

So really analysis is about sorting the good from the bad, saying why you have come to the conclusions you have and narrowing down your research information into a manageable size.

By now with what you had in your head to start with and the narrowing down of the information into the VERY USEFUL you should be in a position to take a few decisions on how you envisage your work progressing.

For the bike example the following conclusions could have been reached:

The best materials for robustness were steel and brass.
The thickest wheels I measured were.... .
The best finish to stop steel rusting was enamel but it is difficult to achieve. Plastic coating was good and so was paint.
The narrowest space that three bikes fit into was ......... .
The space available in the garage is......... .
The average price for padlocks was ......... .
The majority of static locks on the market clamped the wheels or frame.
A survey revealed that ....... % of people had a child's bike in their household.
The survey also revealed that ........ % of people would not like to bend down to undo a lock.
Wall space was available and large enough to hold three bikes.

These are just made up but it gives an idea of what might be found out.