Mathematics Studies

Internal Assessment

Investigation of the relationship between eating dinner and the average grade in students
Criterion A

Research question: Does a relationship between two variables, eating dinner and average

grade in a group of students exist or they are different from each other?

Introduction:

My task is to gather information about IB students eating dinner and their average grades.

This investigation is going to show if there is a relationship between these 2 factors or not.

The mathematical calculations which I used were chi square test and a regression line. To

find the information that I needed, I created a questionnaire for asking 50 IB students “how

often do they eat dinner during the week” and “what is their average grade”. This

questionnaire will give me the raw data which I need for doing the calculations to find out if

there is any correlation between having dinner and average grades that students achieve in

school. I will distribute this questionnaire among students and with help of different online

platforms I can get data. from IB students across the world. Eventually I will make a raw data

table and do my calculations and graphs and analyze my processed data.

Plan:

To get this data gathered, I used an online survey website called SurveyMonkey which will

help me get the questions to more IB students and get data from other IB schools. This will

give me more of an accurate data for doing my calculations and finding out the relationship

between having dinner and average school marks.

Calculations: I will be using chi square test and regression line to find out any relation

between the factors that I chose to work on.

Criterion B
All my data is ready and the data was collected from SurveyMonkey. I got information about
the dinners during the week and average grades from 50 different IB students from 11th grade
and 12th grade. My survey had 2 questions which was “how many times in the week you have
dinner?” and “what is your average grade (from 1-7). I also asked a few students which didn’t
have access to internet and got their data as well.
people Number of dinners during Average grade
the week
1 7 7
2 5 6
3 7 6
4 7 7
5 5 5
6 7 6
7 4 4
8 7 6
9 5 4
10 6 7
11 5 5
12 7 6
13 7 6
14 6 4
15 4 6
16 7 7
17 0 4
18 6 7
19 4 5
20 7 6
21 4 4
22 7 6
23 7 7
24 4 5
25 0 6
 26 6 7
27 7 6
28 7 7
29 3 5
30 7 6
31 2 4
32 0 6
33 7 7
34 2 5
35 0 6
36 3 6
37 7 7
38 7 7
39 6 7
40 7 6
41 7 6
42 0 6
43 7 6
44 7 7
45 4 5
46 1 4
47 0 6
48 7 6
49 3 5
50 5 4

The number of the meals during the week varies from 0 to 7 and the average marks vary from
4 to 7.
Criterion C

Dinners per week Average grade

Mean 4.94 5.78
Mode 6 6
Median 6 6
Lower Quartile 4 5
Upper Quartile 7 6.75
Interquartile Range 1 0.75
Minimum 1 4
Maximum 7 7
Sum 247 289

Mean: Average value, calculated by adding up all of the values and dividing by the number
of values
Mode: the most frequent value
Median: the middle variable
Lower quartile: the middle variable before the median
Upper quartile: the middle value after median
Interquartile range: upper quartile - lower quartiles
Calculation of the least squares regression
This calculation will show. The relationship between X and Y (independent and dependent
variable) which in my case are “number of dinners per week” and “average grade”
The formula for calculating this is:
S xy
γ −γ = 2
¿)
(S x )

S x =√ ∑ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿

x is the average of number of dinners per week

γ is the average of average grades of students
 S xy
γ −γ = 2
¿)
(S x )
1.1468
Y-5.78= (X-4.94)
( 2.428250399 )2
 1.1468
Y= (X-4.94)+5.78
5.8964
Calculation of Pearson’s correlation coefficient
Pearson’s correlation coefficient shows how strong the relationship between the independent
variable and dependent variable is which in my case shows the strength of the relationship
between dinners eaten per week and average grade
The formulae is:
 1.1468
r= = 0.469559
2.428250399∗1.005783277
the correlation between the “dinners during the week” and “average grade” is strong because
the “r” is more than 0.1.
chi2test
this test is to calculate if the observed data fits an expected one. If there is a relation it should
be easy to find out from this test
- Null hypothesis (H0): the two variables number of dinners per week (X) and average
grade (Y) is independent.
- Alternative hypothesis (H1): the two variables number of dinners per week (X) and
average grade (Y) are not independent on each other.
Observed data
Dinner/grade G2 2G4 G4 total
D2 0 0 7 7
2D4 0 0 5 5
D4 0 0 37 37
total 0 0 50 50

Expected data
Dinner/grade G2 2G4 G4 total
D2 0 0 7 7
2D4 0 0 5 5
D4 0 0 37 37
total 0 0 50 50

k 2 2 2 2 2

⏞ (|0−00|−0.5) + (|0−0|0−0.5) + (|0−0|0−0.5) + (|0−0|0−0.5) + (|0−0|0−0.5) + (|0−0|0−0.5) +

Σ

Degrees Of Freedom:
DF=(3-1)*(3-1)=4
Conclusion
The Chi 2 critical value at 5% significance with 4 degrees of freedom is 9.488. As the Chi 2
value is less than the critical value, 0.09285714<9.488, the null hypothesis is
accepted and the number of dinners per week is independent of the average grades they have.