Disruption Risk in the classroom

Sridhar Telidevara1

Model

Let N be the total number of the students.

Let the probability that a student would want to visit restroom during an ongoing class be p.
Then, the total number of students r who would want to use the restroom during any ongoing class
session follows a simple binomial distribution. The probability that exactly r students would want
to visit the restroom is

n r
p (1 p)nr
P (r) =

(1.1)

If p is very small and N is large such that N p > 3 then we may also use Poisson distribution,
equation 1.2 to determine the overall probability of r students using the restroom in a class of N
students.

P (r) =

(N p)r eN p
r!

(1.2)

The answer is as simple as 1.1 or 1.2 if the probability is the same for all the individuals and that it
is not influenced or determined by other environmental factors like fellow friends, classroom lecture,
topic, rules and regulation of the school etc. The rules and regulation of the school deter individuals
from going out of the class despite their desire to go out like everyone. So there is a threshold for

sridhar@tapmi.edu.in

each individual above which they would express the desire to go out of the class or below which
they choose to remain in the class.
Thus we can write

pi = p + i ,

(1.3)

where i = 1, 2, . . . , N stands for the individual students.

Assuming that all the individuals make decisions independently of each other, the likelihood of r
individuals using the restroom is

L =

r
Y

pi

N
r
Y

i=1

(1 pj )

(1.4)

j=1

Let the underlying distribution be a logistic distribution, i.e.,

pi =

e x i
1 + e x i

(1.5)

The link function that links probabilities to observed characteristics of individuals and other characteristics like students perception of the lecture, subject, schools rules and regulations, facultys
teaching style etc. is assumed to be a logistic function. That is,

F ( 0 xi ) = 0 + 1 gender + 2 CGPA + 3 interest in the subject

= +3 faculty teaching style + 4 strict rules + 5 individual potential

(1.6)

= +6 other terms

The loglikelihood of 1.4 is

max log(L) =

r
X
i=1

pi +

N
r
X
j=1

(1 pj )

(1.7)

Maximize the above loglikelihood to determine the individual probabilities of going out to restroom
during the sessions.

Data

Run a survey questionnaire across all students to get information on their gender, cgpa, interest
in the subject, faculty teaching stye, strict rules and whether they have used the restroom at least
once during the class room sessions when it was not absolute necessary. You may also capture the
information on number of times an individual visited restroom out of shear bore and that requires
usage of ordered probit model. However, for now simple logistic model would help us determine the
individual propensity to use the restroom using a restroom during a class room session.

You might remember the vague words like logit, poisson, binomial.. this is good enough
for our class room purpose to assess the disruption risk. Otherwise, the model can be
improved significantly.