International Journal of Research Scholars (IJRS) Volume 1, Issue 2, 2017

ISSN: 2521-3547, http://www.ijrs.pk

Expected Students Absents during a Semester: A case of

Monte Carlo Technique
Faisal Afzal Siddiqui1, Nida Ashraf1, Hina Afzal1, Salman Abbasi2, and Fahmeeda Bano3
1
Business Research Consultants, Karachi, Pakistan, Mobile: +92-300-9297089, email: brc.khi@gmail.com
2
Director Academics, Iqra University, North Nazimabad Campus, Karachi. email: salman.upenn@gmail.com
3
Faculty Member, Department of Teacher Education, Urdu University, Karachi, email: drfehmida6@gmail.com

Abstract: The objective of this study is to determine the expected absences of a student studying in the semester
system with the help of Monte Carlo Simulation Technique. The results are based on collected data from
attendance register of different private universities. The course title, faculty, timing, semester, and institution
name are not considered. The actual result is approximately same as the generated by simulation process
through Monte Carlo Techniques.

Key Words: Expected Value, Monte Carlo Technique, Probability Distribution, and Simulation.

Introduction functions. A Monte Carlo simulation could involve

The objective of this study is to determine the
expected absences of a student studying in the
semester system with the help of Monte Carlo
Simulation Technique, for this purpose the
researchers studied of different courses of different
discipline containing three-hour credit courses [2]. It
is assumed that the center of attention for the
students to take the courses seriously. Students of all
considered universities are allowed a maximum of
six absences in any course of total thirty teaching
sessions during a semester. If a student's absences
exceed six in any course, he is dropped and
subsequently is assigned grade F in that course. If
a student enters ten minutes late in the class then he
is treated as Absent in the class.
In a semester specific course assigned to the
faculty. All these courses are based on teaching
assignment. The instructor followed all rules and
regulations of the institute strictly at the time of
marking each student absent in any session. We
calculate the actual absence of the students and
compare with the expected absence for future
courses in next sections. Researcher stimulates
expected student absences, using Monte Carlo
Simulation Technique, for the semester.
Monte Carlo Simulations
Monte Carlo simulation performs the analysis by
building models of possible results by substituting a
range of values into a probability distribution [1,3]. It
calculates results over and over, each time using a
different set of random values from the probability
thousands or tens of thousands of recalculations
before it is complete. Monte Carlo simulation
produces distributions of possible outcome values.
Application of Monte Carlo Simulation
We use convenient sampling to collect our data
from semester. The sample size is 550 students. We
define a random variable \x00 as the number of
absences in a course and also list its possible
outcomes. So x: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. actually there
was no student observed with zero absence. We
develop the following Table 1 for the probability
distribution of this random variable from collected
data of all classes in our sample. We calculate the
expected value of our random variable and found that
E(x) = 3:9491. Next, we use Monte Carlo Simulation
Technique to present expected number of students'
absences. For this the possible outcomes and
probability distribution of our experiment are the
same as mentioned above for variable x. Now we set
up a correspondence between the outcomes of our
experiment and the random numbers as follows in
Table 2. Now researcher compute the average of the
absentees, hence simulated using Monte Carlo
Technique, for each student studying in the semester
system that comes out to be 3:9436. We can say that
it is expected that each student in the considered
course will be almost four times absent from thirty
sessions in a semester.

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International Journal of Research Scholars (IJRS) Volume 1, Issue 2, 2017
ISSN: 2521-3547, http://www.ijrs.pk

hence design our teaching strategy effectively and

Table 1: Student Absences from Attendance accordingly.
Register
References
Number of Number Calculated Taking
Absences of Probability Average
x Students p(x) x.p(x) 1. Allan G. Bluman. Elementary Statistics.
McGraw-Hill Education, 9th edition, 2013.
1 86 0.1564 0.1564
2 64 0.1164 0.2327 2. Muhammad Shahbaz Khan and Kahkashan
Iqbal, editors. Students' absents during
3 53 0.0964 0.2891
semester: A simulation based study.
4 105 0.1909 0.7636 Institute of Business Management (IoBM),
5 73 0.1327 0.6636 Second Mathematics Colloquium, March
2008.
6 169 0.3073 1.8436
Total 550 1.0000 3.9491 3. Neil A. Weiss. Introductory Statistics.
Pearson, 10th edition, 2015.

Table 2: Student Absences from Monte Carlo

Technique

Number of Number Calculated Taking

Absences of Probability Average
x Students p(x) x.p(x)
1 72 0.1309 0.1309
2 78 0.1418 0.2836
3 89 0.1618 0.4855
4 68 0.1236 0.4945
5 56 0.1018 0.5091
6 187 0.3400 2.0400
Total 550 1.0000 3.9436

Results
The expected absence of each student in any
course comes out to be almost four. There can be
definitely various reasons for students for not
attending classes of this course. These may include
the semester load in terms of assignments and reports
of other courses, non-serious attitude in terms of not
knowing the usefulness of the course on their level or
other problems like transport problems etc.

Conclusions
It is a matter of fact that students' absence in the
class results in academic loss but we have not taken
students' abilities into account. Performance of a
student in a course depends much on his abilities
than his absences. Simulation can play a good role in
this regard as well if we measure our students'
abilities in the beginning of our course; stimulate
them so as to know the end results of course and

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