By Rebecca, Leonie and Eleanor.

Maths Statistics Project.

Is there a correlation between the hand that you write with and you success
in school, judged by which class you have been streamed into for Maths, Irish
and French?
Introduction:
In our project we aim to see is there a correlation between the hand you write with and
what streamed class you are in, thus seeing if there is a connection between their success in
school in the core subjects and which hand you use to write with. We surveyed students
from 3rd and 4th year asking them to fill out which hand they write with and what class they
are in for the subjects they are streamed in (Irish, Maths, French). As there are a far greater
number of students in the school that are right handed than left handed we compared the
results as percentages of there individual populations. We aim to display our information in
such a way that it will be clear to see if there is a direct correlation or if the correlation levels
are closer to zero. We will also compare if there is a significant relationship between the
languages or maths and the hand you write with.

Method:
To carry out our investigation we first thought of the idea for the project. The next step was
to create the survey. We devised a set of questions asking the students what hand they
write with and what class are they in for their streamed subjects (Irish, Maths, French). We
then had to select a random sample from both 3rd and 4th years equally to survey. We
selected these randomly by pulling form groups from a hat and surveying the randomly
selected form groups. Our survey was an online survey so we went around to each of these
classes putting the link or URL to or survey on the board and asking them to complete our
survey on their devices. We received the responses of our survey and analysed them. We
then created a correlation graph and numerous other charts and graphs to represent our
findings accurately and clearly.

By Rebecca, Leonie and Eleanor.

Our Survey:

Investigating the correlation between success

in school and the hand you write with
Please select which hand you write with and what class you have
been streamed in in the subjects named.
o
Right handed
o
Left handed
Maths
Please select which maths class level you are in
o
Top honours
o
Honours 2
o
Honours 3
o
Ordinary level
French
Please select which French class level you are in
o
Top honours
o
Honours 2
o
Honours 3
o
Ordinary level
Irish
Please select which irish class level you are in
o
Top honours
o
Honours 2
o
Honours 3
o
Ordinary level
Submit

By Rebecca, Leonie and Eleanor.

Results:
Of the 34 people we surveyed, 87%
were right handed and 10% were left
handed. Unfortunately, six people did
not answer this question and therefore
has skewed the results slightly.
However, it is clear to see that there is
a significant difference in the amount
of right handed people to the left
handed people.

Our first question with regard to the class level was

Maths. Here, ten people or 29.41% answered that they
were in the top honours class, 18 people or 52.94%
said they were in the 2nd honours class, only 2 people
or 5.88% stated that they were in the 3rd honours class
and four people or 11.77% said that they were in the
ordinary level class group. Of the people who said that
they were left handed, half were in the top honours
class and the other half were in the 2nd honours class.
We found this to be very interesting information and
we wondered whether or not we would see a
correlation with the other subjects. Of the right
handed people, 30.77% were in the top honours class,
this compares drastically to the 50% of the left handed people.

By Rebecca, Leonie and Eleanor.

Our second question was French. Here, twelve people or 35.29% answered that they were
in the top honours class, nine people or 26.47% said they were in the 2 nd honours class, nine
people or 26.47% stated that they were in the 3rd honours class and one person or 2.94%
said that they were in the ordinary level class group. However, three people or 8.82% said
that they didnt do French which may have skewed our results once again. Of the left
handed people, once again, half said that they were in top honours, a quarter said they
were in 2nd honours and a quarter of the people said they were in 3rd honours. Of the right
handed people surveyed, ten people or 38.46% said that they were in top honours.

Our final
people or
in the top
35.29% said
class, ten

question was Irish. Here, seven

20.59% answered that they were
honours class, twelve people or
they were in the 2nd honours
people or 29.41% stated that
they were in the 3rd honours class and two people or 5.88%
said that they were in the ordinary level class group.
However, three people or 8.82% said that they didnt learn
Irish which may
have skewed our
results once again.
Of the left handed
people, once again,
half said that they
were in top
honours, a quarter
nd
said they were in 2 honours and a quarter of the
people said they were in 3rd honours. Of the right
handed people surveyed, ten people or 38.46% said
that they were in top honours.

By Rebecca, Leonie and Eleanor.

Conclusion:
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
0

We have displayed our results in the above table, with the y-axis representing the amount
of people who selected this option. We can see that throughout the top honours classes,
represented by the 1, there is a relative pattern, with in and around the same amount of
people. The same can be said with regards to ordinary level or honours 4 represented by the
number 4 on the table. However, within the honours 2 and honours 3 classes, there are
some obvious outliers. This can be interpreted in a few different ways, such as the levels in
both of these classes are very similar and therefore the people vary in each class, or the fact
that different types of intelligence are required for maths and French and Irish, i.e the two
languages and the more logical thinking subject. When we look at the percentages of the
people in the top honours classes, 20.69% of them were left handed. This is not close to the
percentage left handed people surveyed amongst the right handed people. This depicts how
there may be a correlation between the hand you write with and you success in school
which could show that left handed people are 20% on average more likely to be in a top
honours class than a right handed person. However, we cannot determine this for definite
as there were some key flaws to our survey.

Reflection:
When looking back on our project, we could outline some key faults in our surveys. Some
people do not do French and Irish. This skewed our results and may have resulted in a
wrong or misjudged conclusion. Also, some responses we gathered from our surveys did not

By Rebecca, Leonie and Eleanor.

include viable answers which also may have contributed to eratic answers and results in
some cases.