Thursday, December 31, 2009

Where do you sit in class?

Where in the class room do you usually sit? Among us teachers, it is believed that the better students generally sit closer to the front. But is that true? I decided to test that hypothesis.

At the beginning of the semester, I took a photograph of the students in their seats in the lecture hall. At the end of the semester, after I have finished grading, I plot a graph of the overall performance of the students (vertical axis) against the distance between their seats and the lecturer (horizontal exis). Indeed, there is a noticeable negative correlation there. The closer they are to the lecturer, the better their perfomance tends to be.



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suspect that all along. Thanks for doing a graph to demonstrate the relationship.
Actually I further believe 'birds of a feather flock together'. So neighboring students should score similarly. In some sense, this is also demonstrated in your graph.

StephenC said...

Yeah. I had wondered about that too. When I have time, I might analyze that.

Unknown said...

we are very amused =)

StephenC said...

Yeah. Thanks for the link.
By the way, do you observe the same correlation?

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