Students GRE quantitative level and departments

Ramin Shamshiri, UFID: 9021-3353 STA 6126, Spring 2010 Objective of study: Do GRE quantitative scores of UF graduate students tend to vary among their departments? In other words, is students department and their GRE quantitative scores independent? The data for testing this hypothesis are collected from 98 UF graduate students from three engineering department, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE), Electrical & Computer Engineering (CEC) and Computer Information & Science Engineering (CISE) as given in Table 1. We defined four categories for GRE quantitative score, Very high (VH), High (H), Average (A) and Low (L). Methodology: 98 randomly selected UF graduate students from three engineering departments (MAE, ECE and CISE) were asked to write their department name and circle the level of their GRE quantitative score according to the following table VH [780,800] H [760,780] A [730,760] L [300,730] Minitab output: Performing the test in Minitab software gives a similar Chi-square value as the result from manual calculation. I have also done this problem in SAS since I didnt have access to Minitab at first. (See Appendix) Chi-Square Test: MAE, ECE, CISE Expected counts are printed below observed counts. Chi-Square contributions are printed below expected counts 1 MAE 4 6.40 0.899 13 12.46 0.023 11 10.78 0.005 5 3.37 0.792 33 ECE 8 6.40 0.401 15 12.46 0.518 8 10.78 0.715 2 3.37 0.555 33 CISE 7 6.20 0.102 9 12.08 0.786 13 10.45 0.623 3 3.27 0.022 32 Total 19

37

32

The Chi-square test given by (1) with significant level, (type I error) =0.01 was used to test the independence of the two categorical variables, GRE quantitative level and students department. The population is all UF graduate students in the college of engineering. Our grand sample size was equal to 98. The response is the graduate students level of GRE quantitative score and the predictor is department. The hypothesis can be written in the below form: : The UF graduate students department and their GRE quantitative level are independent : H0 is not true 2 =

10

Total

98

Chi-Sq = 5.440, DF = 6, P-Value = 0.489 3 cells with expected counts less than 5. P-value conclusion: With degree of freedom=6, we search the chi-square table and see that our Chi-square test statistic (which is 5.44) is between 3.455 and 7.841 corresponding to right tale probability of 0.75 and 0.5. Therefore we can conclude that the P-value of our test is between (0.5,075). In other words our P-value is not less than the significant level =0.01. In fact, we can see from Minitab and SAS output that the P-value of this test is 0.48. Conclusion: Under any reasonable choice of type I error (), we do not reject the null hypotheses that the students GRE quantitative scores and their department are independent (Since P-value is too large and not smaller than =0.1). It means that there are a same proportion of GRE quantitative scores in the three different departments. In the other words, GRE quantitative score does not have any relationship with the three departments.

( )2

Expected Cell= =

(1)

Degree of Freedom=df= (row-1)(Col-1) The P-value will be the area to the right of the observed 2 in the chi-square distribution with the above degree of freedom. The assumptions of the test are: the samples are random and the sample sizes are sufficiently large so that the expected cell counts are all 5 or more. Some parts of the collected data are less than 5 and do not meet the second assumption. The expected values are calculated and shown in Table 2. For the sake of keeping the report short, manual calculations is shown only for two cells in the appendix.

Appendix: Manual calculation 19 33 11 = 98 = 6.40 98 98 10 32 43 = 98 = 3.27 98 98 The Chi-square value is then calculated as: (4 6.4)2 (3 3.27)2 2 = + + = . 6.4 3.27 With degrees of freedom= (4-1).(3-1)=6

Tables Department MAE ECE CISE Very High 4 8 7 High 13 15 9 Average 11 8 13 Low 5 2 3 Total 33 33 32 Table 1: Observed values GRE level Department MAE ECE CISE Very High 6.40 6.40 6.20 High 12.46 12.46 12.08 Average 10.78 10.78 10.45 Low 3.37 3.37 3.27 Total 33 33 32 Table 2: Expected Values GRE level GRE level Very High High Average Low Total Table 3: Department ECE CISE 0.40 0.10 0.52 0.79 0.71 0.62 0.56 0.02 2.19 1.53

Total 19 37 32 10 98

SAS code data GreLevel; input GreLevel $ department$ count@@; datalines; VH MAE 4 H MAE 13 A MAE 11 L MAE 5 VH ECE 8 H ECE 15 A ECE 8 L ECE 2 VH CISE 7 H CISE 9 A CISE 13 L CISE 3; proc freq data= GreLevel; tables GreLevel * department / cellchi2 chisq expected norow nocol nopercent; weight count; quit;

Total 19 37 32 10 98

MAE 0.90 0.02 0.00 0.79 1.72

Total 1.40 1.33 1.34 1.37 5.44