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Music and Studying Habits

Does music affect your retention of knowledge while


studying for a test?
In this report, students were tested to see if listening to
music had an effect on the grade of one of two quizzes.
The population was The Academy of Global Studies at
Austin High.
Nicholas Grubbs
Period 6
5/16/14






How many times a week do you study in silence? How many times do you actually listen
to music of choice instead? Many people listen to music while they are studying. Many people
argue for and against the benefits of studying while listening to music. A sample and
experiment was used to see if music while studying would drastically change scores on a test.
Studying while playing music is so prevalent in this society that most college roommate
profilers ask if you did listen to music while studying and which kinds. Even though many
people do study with music, I have not seen concrete evidence that shows if music helps or
hurts when it comes to retaining knowledge. Because of the lack of information on the subject,
I wanted to test if it really positively affected the grades for students on tests.
The null hypothesis was that music helps the average person retain knowledge while
studying. To test this hypotheses a simple random sample of Academy of Global students in
Austin High would be sampled. They would have a sheet of fifteen facts that they would try to
memorize in one minute and then they would take a quiz that had questions on five of the
facts. They would repeat it with new facts and questions while listening to music. Each quiz
would be chosen to be given to the student randomly using a random number generator. On
the second quiz, the treatment in this experiment (which was headphones) was given to the
student. The headphones played the song Bleeding Out by the Imagine Dragons. This song was
chosen as the control song because it was fairly upbeat and had a mix of instrumental parts and
vocal singing during the first minute of the song. After both the quizzes were taken, they would
be graded for the proportion correct with and without music.
The population that was chosen was AGS in Austin High because it was a population that
was easy to sample from and it allowed me to take a large enough sample. It was decided to
sample 30 of all the AGS students. With over 400 total AGS students, it was easy with 30 to
satisfy the condition of N is greater the 10 times the sample size. To find the 30 people that was
needed to sample from a list of all 459 students and labeled them 001 to 459 and used a
random number generator to find the 30 participants for the study. Getting a sample from only
AGS kids will not allow me to make accurate predictions on whether listening to music or not
while studying affects retention in general or even in the main school of Austin High.
To calculate to see if the average proportion of the quiz without music is equal to the
average proportion of the music quiz. The hypothesis that was being tested is that the
population mean proportion of facts numbered without listening to music equals the true
population mean proportion of facts remembered when listening to music. The alternative
hypothesis is that the true population mean proportion of facts remembered without listening
to music is less than the true population mean proportion of facts remembered when listening
to music. The hypothesis test was run after all of the assumptions and conditions for the test
were satisfied and checked. The conditions were a Simple Random Sample (SRS) was
preformed, the population or N1 is greater than ten times n or sample size. Since 490 is greater
than ten times thirty which equals 300 and 490 is greater than 300. The standard Deviation is
unknown because the standard deviation of the sample is only known. N2 is also 490 is greater
than 300. Because data was used for this hypothesis test two different NQP plots had to be
used. Because of their linearity in the NQP plots it is known that the data is normal. It was run
using the t equals X1-X2 over the square root of standard deviation one over N one plus
standard deviation two over N two. When the test was run it gave a t value of -2.118. When
the t value was substituted onto a t distribution it corresponded with a p value of .0192 which
was less than the chosen alpha value of .05. This meant that the true population mean
proportion of facts remembered without listening to music was less than the true population
mean proportion of facts remembered when listening to music.
In conclusion, since the p value is so low it shows that the proportions could not be the
same. In conclusion the alternative hypothesis is correct given the test that was ran. The
alternative hypothesis is that the proportion of answers right without music would be less than
the proportion of right answers with music playing. This means that music does in this sample
have a positive effect on the students retention of knowledge. There could be some factors
that could skew my data. First, these test where run in the halls of Austin High, which are load
and busy. When they take the test without music it could be distracting and hard to
concentrate on the quiz. On the other hand, when the students take the quiz with music they
put on over ear head phones that cancel out some of the noise and help them concentrate on
the quiz.
Works Cited
Doraiswamy, Sheela. "Does Music Help You Study? - Mind the Science Gap."Mind
the Science Gap RSS. N.p., 08 Oct. 2012. Web. 28 May 2014.
<http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2012/10/08/does-music-help-you-study/>.

"Fun Facts." Fun Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2014. <http://www.begent.org/funfact.htm>.
Jane. "Should You Listen to Music When You Study?" Learning Fundamentals. N.p., 17 June
2012. Web. 27 May 2014. <http://learningfundamentals.com.au/blog/should-you-listen-to-
music-when-you-study/>.

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