As we thought about what we wanted to use for our comprehensive
project, we decided we wanted to see who was really smarter,
high school athletes, or musicians. We devised a plan to collect
surveys of 60 varsity athletes and 60 music students from NOHS.
We asked them questions regarding GPA, their study habits, and
their future plans. We hoped to find out that athletes are as
smart as or smarter than musicians. We sent out the surveys via
teachers’ mailboxes for athletes and hand delivery by Matt
Juergemeier. The surveys were all returned within a couple days.
We recorded
the data in MINITAB, and we ran several tests on it. We found
that the mean GPA of musicians was only about .09 higher than
the GPA of athletes. The results were so similar that running a
T test confirmed what we had already noticed: There isn’t much
of a difference in the GPA of athletes and musicians in our
school.
We also came
to the conclusion that asking students about their GPA is not a
reliable source of discovering how “smart” they are. Many times
a student can work really hard to earn a high GPA, but they
really are not all that intelligent. Other times, a student is
bright and intelligent, but has a lazy work ethic. Sometimes the
classes in which a student is enrolled in can be a factor. If
someone takes very easy and light workload classes, it can be
simple to obtain a high GPA. Other times a student signs up for
a lot of tough classes and ends up struggling to achieve a high
GPA. In any case, if a good study is to be conducted on which
category is smarter, there must be more in depth studying on the
actual intelligence of the person, and not just their GPA.
As we thought about what we wanted to use for our comprehensive project, we decided we wanted to see who was really smarter, high school athletes, or musicians. We devised a plan to collect surveys of 60 varsity athletes and 60 music students from NOHS. We asked them questions regarding GPA, their study habits, and their future plans. We hoped to find out that athletes are as smart as or smarter than musicians. We sent out the surveys via teachers’ mailboxes for athletes and hand delivery by Matt Juergemeier. The surveys were all returned within a couple days.
We recorded the data in MINITAB, and we ran several tests on it. We found that the mean GPA of musicians was only about .09 higher than the GPA of athletes. The results were so similar that running a T test confirmed what we had already noticed: There isn’t much of a difference in the GPA of athletes and musicians in our school.
We also came to the conclusion that asking students about their GPA is not a reliable source of discovering how “smart” they are. Many times a student can work really hard to earn a high GPA, but they really are not all that intelligent. Other times, a student is bright and intelligent, but has a lazy work ethic. Sometimes the classes in which a student is enrolled in can be a factor. If someone takes very easy and light workload classes, it can be simple to obtain a high GPA. Other times a student signs up for a lot of tough classes and ends up struggling to achieve a high GPA. In any case, if a good study is to be conducted on which category is smarter, there must be more in depth studying on the actual intelligence of the person, and not just their GPA.