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/>.