I have been asked to investigate factors that affect the depreciation :: Economics

I have been asked to investigate factors that affect the depreciation of cars. I have been asked to investigate factors that affect the depreciation of cars. To do this I would ideally like to collect my own data about used cars. This would be called primary data. I would have collected data on the make, model, mileage, engine size, age, price and price when new of several hundred used cars. Unfortunately this would have taken a lot of time, but the advantage would have been that it would have been reliable data which I could trust, and I could have found out exactly the information that I wanted. It would have been impossible for me to do such a large survey, however, so I had to use secondary data that I got from the CCEA website. The advantage of this was that it was quick, cheap and easy, but I can't be sure of the accuracy of these results and I don't know if any bias was involved when it was being collected. I have also found that many of the results are incomplete. From the very start, I am sure that two of these results are wrong - a Renault Laguna which costs  £50,000, and a Renault Clio that increases in value. I have deleted these results straight away. Hypothesis 1 My first hypothesis is that cars depreciate more as they get older. I used the spreadsheet on the computer to test this hypothesis, but first I had to get the age and percentage depreciation for each car, neither of which are recorded in the table. Firstly, to get the age of the cars, I subtracted the year in which they were made from 2002, the year when the data was collected. I first created a new column on the spreadsheet and called it age. Then I typed into the first box under the title the formula for age- =2002-F2 where F2 is the column for the year the car was made. This filled the box with the age of the car. I then highlighted the box, right clicked and selected copy, before highlighting all the boxes below and selecting paste special, formula. This filled in the ages for all of the cars. Next, to get the percentage depreciation, I made another column and filled it with a more complicated formula- =(I2-H2)/I2*100 where I2 is the price when new and H2 is the price now. This filled the first box in the percentage depreciation column with the appropriate value, and I copied the formula into the other boxes as before. I then highlighted these two columns and copied them into chart 2. I have been asked to investigate factors that affect the depreciation :: Economics I have been asked to investigate factors that affect the depreciation of cars. I have been asked to investigate factors that affect the depreciation of cars. To do this I would ideally like to collect my own data about used cars. This would be called primary data. I would have collected data on the make, model, mileage, engine size, age, price and price when new of several hundred used cars. Unfortunately this would have taken a lot of time, but the advantage would have been that it would have been reliable data which I could trust, and I could have found out exactly the information that I wanted. It would have been impossible for me to do such a large survey, however, so I had to use secondary data that I got from the CCEA website. The advantage of this was that it was quick, cheap and easy, but I can't be sure of the accuracy of these results and I don't know if any bias was involved when it was being collected. I have also found that many of the results are incomplete. From the very start, I am sure that two of these results are wrong - a Renault Laguna which costs  £50,000, and a Renault Clio that increases in value. I have deleted these results straight away. Hypothesis 1 My first hypothesis is that cars depreciate more as they get older. I used the spreadsheet on the computer to test this hypothesis, but first I had to get the age and percentage depreciation for each car, neither of which are recorded in the table. Firstly, to get the age of the cars, I subtracted the year in which they were made from 2002, the year when the data was collected. I first created a new column on the spreadsheet and called it age. Then I typed into the first box under the title the formula for age- =2002-F2 where F2 is the column for the year the car was made. This filled the box with the age of the car. I then highlighted the box, right clicked and selected copy, before highlighting all the boxes below and selecting paste special, formula. This filled in the ages for all of the cars. Next, to get the percentage depreciation, I made another column and filled it with a more complicated formula- =(I2-H2)/I2*100 where I2 is the price when new and H2 is the price now. This filled the first box in the percentage depreciation column with the appropriate value, and I copied the formula into the other boxes as before. I then highlighted these two columns and copied them into chart 2.