Musical Heart Melody

Among Teenagers
AP Statistics Culminating Project
Alex Ward, Kiker 6, May 13, 2015

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Table of Contents
Cover Page:
Page 1
Table of Contents:
Page 2
Analytical Report:
Page 3-6
Appendices:
Page 7-8
Works Cited:
Page 9
Original Signatures
Page 10
Peer Review and Feedback form
Page 11
Analytical Report Rough Draft
Page 12-16

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Alex Ward
AP Statistics
Kiker 6
May 13, 2015
Musical Heart Melody Among Teenagers
Throughout the years, high school juniors and seniors have probably done their
fair share of homework, many of whom most likely either listen to music or have listened
to music while doing their homework. Many students try to gain every advantage
possible while doing their homework whether it be to get it done as quickly as possible,
or do it as efficiently as possible and ensuring that their knowledge is furthered and
retained for future possible applications. I brought up the question to see if the type of
music has anything to do with effectiveness and efficiency of getting homework or any
type of work done. I began by deciding that I would use heart rate in beats per minute
(BPM) as my response variable, in that it is proven that an increase in normal heart rate
while doing any type of academic work deteriorates from overall efficiency and success.
This experiment was done by choosing two types of music, one calm song and
one hard song. Two songs one of which was very calm and had little to no words that
could be described as relaxing. For the calm song, Air by Johann Sebastian Bach was

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chosen for its relaxing melody and mellifluous sound. On the flip side, another song was
needed that could be described as hard and very fast paced. For the hard song Enter
Sandman by Metallica, was chosen for its intense melody and direct vocals. A list was
then gathered a list of juniors and seniors in AGS and blocked them by grade level. From
there, 16 juniors and 16 seniors were randomly selected using a random number
generator from each block and then randomly assigned 8 juniors and 8 seniors into either
the hard music category or the clam music category. At this point there were now 8
juniors and 8 seniors assigned to both calm music and hard music with 32 students total.
To avoid lurking variables and other such bias, the volume for both sounds and all of the
subjects was ensured to be at a constantly level all of the time, it was also ensured to
record before the music, and after the music heart rates so we could see some type of
change from their resting heart rate in hopes to gather further information to make some
type of conclusion whether type of music has anything to do with heart rate and then can
be further correlated to the effectiveness and efficiency of getting homework or any type
of work done amongst teenagers.
When it was time to collect data, students were pulled out of classes and in the
hall and recorded their before (resting) heart rate. Now there are many variables that went
into this observation could have been avoided. Students were doing all types of things
before they were pulled them out in the hallway, some were working quietly on
homework, others were talking to their friends, a couple were chewing gum, and students
in the Link Crew class were doing anything but resting, so it was noted that there would
be some extent of fluctuation in resting heart. Since this was dependent test and each
students before and after heart rate was recorded, it should not effect the data too much.

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The students were then asked to put in the ear phones and write down on a piece of paper
either how their day was going, or what they did that day, or anything to keep them busy
and somewhat simulate doing homework. Then either Enter Sandman or Air
depending on what genre they were assigned to was played for a minute and 45 seconds
because that seemed to be an efficient amount of time for the student to listen to the song
for long enough while still not listening to the entirety of the song. Their new heart rate
was then recorded their after heart rate and then they were asked for their signature and
that subject was done testing. This test was complete for all 32 subjects and sufficient
random sample was collected.
Without doing any test or anything with the data, it is very apparent that Enter
Sandman almost always had somewhat of an increase in heart rate among the students
while Air had either a decrease or stayed the same heart rate for those students who
listened to the calm song. The null hypothesis of this experiment is that the true
population difference of means of heart rates of the true population of students listening
to harder music is greater than the true population difference of means of heart rates of
the population of students listening to calmer music. A simple random sample was
collected, as well as 10(16) is greater than the true population difference of students who
listen to classical music as well as 10(16) is greater than the true population difference of
students who listen to more intense music while listening to music. Since the true
population standard deviations for both classical music and more intense music is
unknown, we will use a t-test. Based on the linearity of both NQPs, in appendix B and
appendix C we can assume the we have approximately normal data. When looking at
appendix D it is concluded that the t-value for this experiment is 4.53685. (See appendix

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E for the normal curve). Next the p-value=(t>4.53685) and we conclude that the p-value
for this experiment is .99994661. There is then an apparent degrees of freedom of 15
because there are 16 subjects in each group and 16-1=15, and then we have a normal
alpha value of .05. Since the p-value in this experiment is less than alpha, we will fail to
reject the claim that the true population difference in mean heart rates for students
listening to more intense music is greater than the true population difference in heart rates
for students listening to calmer more relaxing music. Thus, we do not have evidence to
say otherwise that music does not affect heart rate of students.
Based on this information that the null hypotheses was failed to reject, we
conclude that intense music does in fact raise your heart rate while doing some type of
academic activity. From this information one can conclude that doing homework to a
more relaxing music may help a student focus better in that their heart rate is lower and
there is less going on outside of the work that they are doing. With the average heart rate
of more intense music increasing on average 7.625 beats per minute and the average heart
rate for softer classical music decreasing 6.25 beats per minute we can conclude that
listening to classical music that is considered mellifluous is better for the heart and more
importantly could help students be more focused and efficient with their work. In the end,
all four of the conceptual pillars of statistical course were apparent in this experiment and
its rewarding to see truth about a set of data and be able to relate it to the real world and
even be able to suggest to students about the type of music they listen to while working
and how it may help them be more efficient in their work.

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Appendix A:

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Appendix B:
Normal Quintile Plot here
Appendix C:
Normal Quintile Plot here
Appendix D:
t=

7.6256.25

10.019002
7.019022
+(
)
16
16

Appendix E:

(Shaded to the right of 4.54)

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Works Cited
Johann Sebastian Bach. Air. Bach, 1068. MP3.
Metallica. Enter Sandman. Rec. 12 Aug. 1991. Elektra Records, 1991. MP3.
"Normal Probability Distribution Graph Interactive." Intmathcom RSS. N.p., n.d. Web.