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Brian Bahmanyar

March 19, 2014

Seating Success
1. Introduction
Arguably the biggest change in an adolescents life comes when they transition from high school
to college. From the new found independence to the difficulty of school work, a student can become
overwhelmed with all the adjustment. This is why it is important for freshman, in particular, to take
advantage of any opportunity they have to boost their academic performance. Many students agree
that sitting towards the front of their classes helps them pay attention, perform better on exams, and
thus receive better grades.
I conducted an observational study to help shed some light the association between seating
position and academic performance. My research question for the study is, Do freshman Cal Poly
students in the Orfalea College of Business tend to get higher fall quarter GPAs if they sit towards the
front of their classes? I expected that business students sitting towards the front of their classes would
outperform those towards the back, but I was curious as to how statistically significant the result would
be. The explanatory variable in my study is whether the selected student tends to sit in the front or back
half of his/her classrooms (seating position); this variable is categorical and binary. The response
variable is fall quarter GPA, which is quantitative. I predict to draw a statically significant conclusion at
the alpha equals 0.1 level, however I hope that my conclusion will also be significant at lower alpha
levels (0.05 or 0.01).

2. Data Collection
When collecting my data for my observational study I was very careful to gather data from a
sample that is representative of the population of freshman Cal Poly students in the Orfalea College of
Business. The observational units for the study are the randomly selected group of Cal Poly business
students. To randomly select these students for my sample I waited outside of Tenaya (freshman dorm
housing predominately occupied by students in the college of business), Cerro Vista (apartment like
freshman housing, occupied by a variety of majors), and Sierra Madre (freshman dorm housing,
occupied by a variety of majors) at varying times of the day and approached every third student to walk
out. I implemented randomness in my data collection plan by asking every third student who walked out
of the building instead of collecting data from all those who walked out.
I would first ask the potential subject if they are a freshman in the Orfalea College of Business. If
they were, then I went on to ask them if they tend to sit towards the front or back of their classes. In
order to clear any confusion, I had to decide on operational definitions for seating position (the
explanatory variable). For the purposes of this study I defined sitting towards the front as sitting
between the professor and the middle row of desks. Similarly, I defined sitting towards the back as
sitting between the middle row of desks and side of the room opposite the professor. I then asked the
student for their fall quarter GPA. I physically wrote the responses from the participants in a notebook
that I later transferred into an excel file.
A problem I came across while collecting data was non-response. Some of the randomly
selected participants were genuinely busy and did not have time to answer questions. In this case I
would select the next third person who walked out. Although there were a few cases of non-response, I
dont think this led to any bias because there is no reason to believe the answers of respondents differ
from the potential answers of those who chose not to answer. In an effort to control other variables
that could influence the subject I asked all questions with the same wording and did not lead the subject

to an answer in any way. I continued to collect data until I had at least twenty five observations in each
group.
3. Descriptive Analysis

Figures 1 and 2 both compare GPA to classroom seating position for my random sample of 55
students from Cal Polys Orfalea College of Business. These figures indicate that the sample distribution
of GPAs for business students who sit towards the front of their classes is both centered at a higher GPA
and varies less, on average, than the distribution of GPAs for those who sit in the back. Figures 1 and 2
show us that the distribution of GPAs for business students who tend to sit towards the front of their
classrooms is skewed to the left, while the distribution of GPAs for those who sit in the back is
approximately normal. Figure 1 shows some indication of unexpected bimodality in the distribution of
GPAs for business students who sit in the back of their classroom. This tells us that the fall quarter GPAs
for the sampled freshman business students who sit toward the front of their classes is not only higher,
on average, but also varies less from student to student.

Figure 3 shows a comparison between the central tendencies for the distributions of GPA
between those who reportedly tend to sit in the front of their classes and those who tend to sit in the
back from the random sample of 55 students in Cal Polys Orfalea College of Business. From this we can
identify that the distribution of GPAs for business students who tent to sit in the front of their classes
has a larger minimum, first quartile, median, and third quartile than the distribution form those who sit
in the back. In fact Figure 3 shows us that the first quartile GPA in the group who sit in the front is the
same as the median GPA from the group who sit in the back. Interestingly, referring to figure 3, the
student with the highest (maximum) GPA from my sample tends to sit towards the back of his classes.
Figure 3 also further validates that the distribution of GPAs for business students who sit towards the
front of their classes is both centered at a higher median GPA and varies less, on average, than the
distribution of GPAs for those who sit in the back.

Table 1: Table of summaries for the sampled GPAs between those who sit in the front vs. back of class

Back
Front

Sample Size
29
25

Minimum
2.0
2.5

Quartile 1
2.5
3.0

Median
3.0
3.4

Quartile 3
3.32
3.50

Maximum
3.85
3.80

Mean
2.97
3.32

SD
0.519
0.364

From Table 1 we can see that the means of the sampled business students who sit in the front
or back of their classes is 3.32 and 2.97 respectively. This leads to an observed difference of 0.35
between the averages of the groups of interest (GPA of those who sit in front minus GPA of those who
sit in back). As mentioned previously the GPAs of the group who sat in the front varied less than the
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group who sat in the back of their classes. Table 1 allows us to quantify this difference. The sampled
GPAs of those who sat towards the front tended to vary by 0.364 while the GPAs of those who sit in the
back varied buy 0.519. The five number summaries for the sampled business students who sit in the
front and those who sit back of their classes are (2.5, 3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.8) and (2, 2.5, 3, 3.32, 3.85)
respectively. This verifies that all measures of central tendency for the distribution of GPA from the
group of sampled students who tend to sit in the front are larger than those who sit in the back except
for the maximum GPA (where there is only a marginal difference of 0.05).
4. Inferential Analysis
To measure how statistically significant the difference in GPA is between business students who
sit in the front and those who sit in the back of their classes I will conduct a randomization and t-based
test. For both these tests the hypothesis are as follows H0:
Where

front

back

= 0, Ha:

front

back >

0.

represents the true mean GPA of freshman Cal Poly students in the Orfalea College of

Business.
Figure 4: Histogram of
10000 simulated
differences in GPA

Figure 4 is a histogram of 10,000 simulated differences in


means among the group of business students who sit in
the front and the group that sits in the back of their
classrooms assuming that there is no difference in GPA
between the two groups. This graph is approximately
normal, centered at a mean of 0.002 (about 0), and has a
standard deviation of 0.133. The difference in GPA in our
sample data is 0.35 (front-back). Figure 4 shows us that out
of the 10,000 simulated differences, under the null
assumption, only 41 of them had a difference of 0.35 or

greater. Based on the randomization test our approximate p-value is 0.0041. This means that if there
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truly was no difference in GPA between business students who sit in the front and business students
who sit in the back of their classes we would only expect to see a difference equal to or greater than
0.35 only 0.41% of the time, according to the randomization based test.
A second way to test the significance of the observed difference in GPA of 0.35 between
business students who sit towards the front of their classes minus business students who sit in the back
is a t-based test. Before we run this test we must make sure the technical conditions are satisfied. The
sample sizes for business students who sit in the front and business students who sit in the back are 25
and 29 respectively. Due to the fact that both sample sizes are at least 20 we can run a t-based test.
Figure 5: t-distribution of differences in
GPA with 50.06 degrees of freedom

Figure 5 is a t-distribution of the difference in


sample means with 50.06 degrees of freedom.
The distribution is normal and centered at
zero, as expected. From it we can see than the
test statistic for our study is 2.9. This test
statistic leads to a p-value of about 0.003. This
means that if there truly was no difference in
GPA between business students who sit in the
front and business students who sit in the back

of their classes we would only expect to see a difference equal to or greater than 0.35 only 0.3% of the
time, according to the t-based test.
Both of these tests lead to the same conclusion because both of the calculated p-values are
below 0.01. Due to our p-values of 0.0041 (randomization based) and 0.003 (t-test based) we have very
strong evidence against the null hypothesis and can reject it at the alpha equals 0.01 level. In other
words, we can be almost certain that freshman students in Cal Polys Orfalea College of Business who

sat towards the front of their classes achieved a higher average fall quarter GPA than the students who
sat in the back.
Confidence intervals can help us estimate unknown parameters of interest. In order to estimate
the true average difference in GPA between Cal Poly business students who sit in the front minus those
who sit in the back I calculated a 99% confidence interval for the difference in : (0.027, 0.673). We are
99% confident that freshman Cal Poly business students who sit towards the front of their classes will
have an average fall quarter GPA between 0.027 and 0.673 points higher (on a 4.0 scale) than the
average for Cal Poly business students who sit in the back of their classes. This interval is consistent with
both the previous tests of significances, as the entire interval is positive and above zero.
5. Conclusion
In my observational study I investigated if freshman Cal Poly students in the Orfalea College of
Business tend to get higher fall quarter GPAs if they sit towards the front of their classes. We found that
there was a significant difference in fall quarter GPA between those who sit towards the front and those
who sit in the back of their classes. Our sample data lead to a difference in GPA of 0.35 (front-back). This
difference yields a test statistic of 2.9, and p-values of 0.0041 (randomization based) and 0.003 (t-test
based). Both p-values are less than 0.01 so we are able to draw a statistically significant conclusion and
reject the null hypothesis at the alpha equals 0.01. In other words, we can be almost certain that
freshman students in Cal Polys Orfalea College of Business who sat towards the front of their classes
achieved a higher average fall quarter GPA than the students who sat in the back. Although my
investigation indicates that sitting towards the front of classes, for freshman Cal Poly business students,
correlates to a higher fall quarter GPA there are limitations to this conclusion. We cannot draw a cause
and effect conclusion; in order to test if sitting towards the front causes students to get a higher GPA we
must conduct an experiment utilizing random assignment to limit any confounding variables. Our

findings can be generalized to the population of freshman Cal Poly students in the Orfalea College of
Business.
For the most part my investigation went according to plan. Perhaps the only thing I did not
expect was how challenging getting a representative sample was. I had to go to multiple buildings and
wait for hours outside the non-business major specific buildings to get data from freshman business
majors. To improve the scope of the conclusion I could have ran this test again for other majors, to see if
the same correlation is consistent with students of varying fields of study. If I had more time and
resources I would like to run a matched pairs design to test the same question at multiple schools and
possibly draw a very generalized cause and effect conclusion.

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