Mann-Whitney U Test - Lab Report Example

Research Method (statistics) By The of the The of the School The This experiment is done to find out if listening to music has an effect on people’s mathematical abilities. 15 participants were divided into two groups of 7 and 8 each. They were asked to do 10 simple mathematical questions, one group with music and the other without music. Previous researches have shown that music affects learning in a positive way. Therefore, the hypothesis of this experiment is that music has a positive impact on learning/doing work. In order to test this hypothesis, independent sample test and A Mann-Whitney U test were undertaken. Mann-Whitney U test was considered since the sample was assumed to be not normally distributed. According to the results, it was concluded that the there is no statistically significant effect of music on mathematical abilities. Hence, the null hypothesis was not rejected. Despite p value being greater than 0.05, it was suggested that the results were not conclusive since the p value was slightly higher than 0.05.This could have been contributed by factors which were not considered in the experiment such as appropriate sample size selection technique as well as confounding factors. Regardless of these, the result of this experiment showed that there were no significant differences between the scores of the two groups. Key words: Mann-Whitney U test, music, participants Introduction It is believed among scholars and public that music is associated with mathematical abilities (Fauvel, Flood, and Wilson, 2006).This claim is considered to be sensible. For instance, by considering a tone duration in music, an entire note is equal to two half notes, four quarter notes sixtieth notes etc. there has been indication that Music aptitude has a positive association with arithmetic abilities in kids who are four years but not 5 years old (Anvari et al., 2002).Music is as well seen to have an association with scholastic achievement in mathematics but it is to a larger extent in reading achievement (Hobbs, 1985). The claim that music is strongly associated with mathematics can be strongly supported by the fact that the association should be evident when the general intelligent is constant. In addition, mathematicians who have PhDs are seen not to be more musical when compared with those who scholars from humanities(Haimson, Swain, and Winner,2011).There is enough evidence to support the claim that music is related to general intelligence (Doxey & Wright, 1990; Hobbs, 1985; Isen, & Labroo, 2003;Norton et al., 2005; Phillips, 1976; Rainbow, 1965; Sergeant &Thatcher, 1974).According to studies, it was found out that each IQ test positively correlated with the aptitude subtest (Doxey & Wright, 1990).In simple terms, this implied that general intelligence could be measured by music aptitude. It is also seen that the relationship between cognitive abilities and music aptitude extends beyond the testing of IQ to school performance (Good, Aggleton, Kentridge, Barker, & Neave, 1997; Gordon, 1969; Harrison, Asmus, & Serpe, 1994; Hobbs, 1985; Rainbow, 1965).The association between academic achievement and music can be significantly higher than the association between the IQ and music.(Hobbs,1985).In regard to the above, it is pertinent to note that an association between music and mathematical abilities do exist. Basing on literature, it can be concluded that music has an effect on mathematics and this experiment was undertaken to ascertain this claim Design The aim of this experiment is to find out if listening to music has an effect on mathematical abilities. Null hypothesis: There is no statistically significant effect of music on mathematical abilities. Alternate hypothesis: There is a statistically significant effect of music on mathematical abilities. This study used a between-subjects design. The independent variable (IV) was music with two levels, with and without music. The dependent variable (DV) was the number of correct answers of the mathematical questions that was given to the participants. Participants There were 15 participants whom were all psychology students who volunteered in this experiment. The participants were about 18-40 years of age, which consists of mostly 18-22 years of age. There were random races, gender and ethnicity. Random samplings were made for two groups, which had 8 in one (with music) and 7 in the other (without music). Procedure The first group of 8 psychology students were asked to sit in small classrooms. The informed consent and a paper consisting of 10 simple multiplication questions were given out to each of the participants. They were briefed about the experiment and were told that they were the group that will be doing the questions with music. They had 5 minutes to complete and there were no calculators to be used. A desktop and 2 speaker was used to play Electro music while the participants worked on their question. After the first group was done, they handed in the papers and left the classroom. The second group of 7 psychology students were then called in and the same procedure was repeated, except this time, they did the questions in silence. The questions on the paper and the time given were the same. Results Group Statistics Group N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean Result 1 8 7.13 3.441 1.217 2 7 9.29 1.254 .474 Basing on the descriptive statistics above, it is observed that variable (IV) music with two levels, with and without music had the means of 7.13 and 9.29 respectively. Also, the standard deviation is 3.441 and 1.254 respectively. This implies that there is a high variability in the group with music than that with no music. Independent Samples Test Levenes Test for Equality of Variances t-test for Equality of Means F Sig. t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference Std. Error Difference 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Result Equal variances assumed 4.181 .062 -1.567 13 .141 -2.161 1.379 -5.140 .819 Equal variances not assumed -1.655 9.042 .132 -2.161 1.306 -5.112 .791 An independent sample test was carried out basing on between the subject design in order to determine whether listening to music has an effect on people’s mathematical abilities. Basing on Levene’s test, it can be observed that the p value of 0.062 is slightly greater than 0.05 when assumed that the variance of the two groups (with music and no music) are the same. In this regards, the null hypothesis can’t be rejected and it can be concluded that the there is no statistically significant effect of music on mathematical abilities at a significant level of 5 %.However, since the p value is close or slightly higher than 0.05, it can be suggested that the results cannot be conclusive and it indicates that further study needs to be undertaken by considering a bigger sample size as well as other factors that could have an effect on the results such as confounding factors. A Mann-Whitney U test was applied because the two independent variables were assumed not to be normally distributed. Basing on the test as shown in the table above, it can be concluded that there is no statistically significant effect of music on mathematical abilities. This is because the p value (0.189) is greater than 0.05 Discussion The result shows that difference between participants who did the mathematical questions with and without music is not significant (p > 0.5). Therefore, the alternate hypothesis is rejected and the null hypothesis is accepted. This experiment’s results are extremely different than previous experiments done in the past. This might be because of the limitations of this experiment. However, since the p value in regards to Levene’s test is closer or slightly higher than 0.05, it clearly indicates that these results can’t be conclusive and further study is needed to ascertain and confirm this claim. Further studies can be undertaken by considering bigger sample size as well as confounding factors that could have an effect on the results. For example, in the experiment, there were different categories of participants such as random races, gender and ethnicity as well as age groups (between 18-40 years. In this case, this was not considered in the experiment and might have an effect on the results or the outcome of the experiment. Another reason that could have contributed to the results being different from the previous experiments could be due to the data or sample size is not normally distributed and in this case, this can be contributed by poor sampling or sampling method which may lead to obtaining samples which are not representative of the population. For instance, in the experiment the participants were not picked using random sampling technique whereby there were 15 participants whom were all psychology students that volunteered. Furthermore, the number of participants in this experiment is very small (15) compared to the much bigger number of the previous experiments done. Second of all, there was an error in the portable speakers. When the music played, the sound only came out of the desktop’s speakers which were very soft. It might not be loud enough to have an effect on the participants doing the questions with music on. References Anvari, S. H., Trainor, L. J., Woodside, J., & Levy, B. A. (2002). Relations among musical skills, phonological processing, and early reading ability in preschool children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 83, 111!130. Doxey, C., & Wright, C. (1990). An exploratory study of children’s music ability. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 5, 425!440. Fauvel, J., Flood, R., & Wilson, R. (2006). Music and mathematics from Pythagoras to fractals. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Good, J. M. M., Aggleton, J. P., Kentridge, R. W., Barker, J. G. M., & Neave, N. J. (1997). Measuring musical aptitude in children: On the role of age, handedness, scholastic achievement, and socioeconomic status. Psychology of Music, 25, 57!69. Gordon, E. E. (1969). Intercorrelations among musical aptitude profile and seashore measures of musical talents subtests. Journal of Research in Music Education, 17, 263!271 Haimson, J., Swain, D., & Winner, E. (2011). Are mathematicians more musical than the rest of us? Music Perception, 29, 203!213. Harrison, C. S., Asmus, E. P., & Serpe, R. T. (1994). Effects of musical aptitude, academic ability, music experience, and motivation on aural skills. Journal of Research in Music Education, 42, 131!144. Hobbs, C. (1985). A comparison of the music aptitude, scholastic aptitude, and academic achievement of young children. Psychology of Music, 13, 93!98. Isen, A. M., & Labroo, A. A. (2003). Some ways in which positive affect facilitates decision making and judgment. In S. L. Schneider, & J. Shanteau (Eds.), Emerging 12. Music and Cognitive Abilities 541 perspectives on judgment and decision research (pp. 365!393). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Norton, A., Winner, E., Cronin, K., Overy, K., Lee, D. J., & Schlaug, G. (2005). Are there pre-existing neural, cognitive, or motoric markers for musical ability? Brain and Cognition, 59, 124!134. Phillips, D. (1976). An investigation of the relationship between musicality and intelligence. Psychology of Music, 4, 16!31 Rainbow, E. L. (1965). A pilot study to investigate the constructs of musical aptitude. Journal of Research in Music Education, 13, 3!14. Sergeant, D., & Thatcher, G. (1974). Intelligence, social status and musical abilities. Psychology of Music, 2, 32!57. Read More