Advanced Courses and Extra Curricular Activities

By : Denver Kuehl and Seth Harding A.P. Statistics and Probability Mrs. Logan 3rd hr. 2013

Question: The Question that we will be researching is Is there a relationship between whether a student does advanced courses and extracurricular activities? We are testing to see if students who take advanced courses are more likely to be involved in an extracurricular activity. We chose this topic because we think people that are in advanced classes have a greater probability of doing extracurricular activities compared to being in an advanced class and not doing extracurricular activities. We collected our data by surveying students in our classes. The students were randomly placed in the classes at the beginning of the year. We are using a two proportion z test because we have two different proportions that were tested to see if there is a difference. Summery of Experiment: The subjects tested were students in our 1st through 6th hour classes. We asked all the students the question of if they are in advanced courses with or without extracurricular activities. We did this to everyone applicable until we had 60 subjects. There was no repetition of students if they appeared twice. Some problems we could have encountered are that half of our classes are average 10th grade classes while the other half were in advanced classes, also it wasnt completely random because it was a convenience sample. If we were given more time we would do a SRS of all the students in the high school and take a larger sample of about 300 people or as much as possible . Research:

0.8 0.6 proportion 0.4 0.2 0

proportion

p1

p2

Proportion of people who take advanced courses and do extracurricular activities (p1)

.71666

43/60

Proportion of people who take advanced courses and do not do extracurricular activities (p2)

.28333

17/60

Parameter: p1= Proportion of people who have advanced courses and do extracurricular activities p2= Proportion of people who take advanced courses and do not do extracurricular activities Hypothesis: Ho: p1=p2 Ha: p1>p2 Conditions: Random: Students were assigned randomly to each class at the beginning of the year. Normal: n(p1)>5= 60(.716)>5= 42.96>5 n(1-p1)= 60(1-.716)>5= 17.04>5 n(p2)>5= 60(.283)>5=16.98>5 n(1-p2)= 60(1-.283)>5 = 43.02>5

Independent: 10n<N = 10(60)<n = 600<N We can assume that there are more that 600 students in advanced courses.

Calculations: Of a 2 Proportion Z test at a =.05

z p1 p 2 p1(1 p1) p 2(1 p 2) n1 n2

.71666 .28333 .71666 (1 .71666 ) .28333 (1 .28333 ) 60 60

z 1.74652

pval normcdf (1.74652,9e999,0,1)

pval .04036
Conclusion: We reject our null hypothesis with a =.05 and a p value of .04036. We conclude there is significant evidence to say there is a greater chance that you are in a extracurricular activity if you are in an advanced class. Calculations: Of a 95% confidence interval
CI p1 . p 2 ( Z *)( p1(1 p1) p 2(1 p 2) n1 n2 .71666 (1 .71666 ) .28333 (1 .28333 ) 60 60

CI .71666 .28333 (1.96 )(

CI (0.2720,0.5946)
Conclusion: We are 95% confident that the true proportional difference between people who take advanced classes and do extracurricular activities and people who are in advanced classes and dont do extracurricular activities is captured by the interval from .2720 to .5946. Since 0 is not included we can assume that there is a difference between the two proportions Final Summary: During our research of the question Is there a relationship between whether a student does advanced courses and extracurricular activities? we found out that there is significant evidence that proves that people who take advanced courses have a greater chance of being in extracurricular activities. We first looked at the graph and it showed a difference between the two proportions then with a stat test and confidence interval we were able to back it up and show a difference between the two.

If we were to do this again we would switch it around to see if people in extracurricular activities are more likely to be in advanced classes. We would also use a one proportion z test to see if the proportion equals .5 instead of the difference being 0.