Statistics in the Media

Statistics in the Media

In the media article of HUFFPOST SCIENCE news, “Depressing New Study Shows Know It-Alls Get Better Grade” by Eliza Sankar-Gorton on 8th October 2015. This article goes along with the study by including and representing data from the study “Contrasting self-report and consensus ratings of intellectual humility and arrogance”. At the beginning of the article, Eliza asserts a strong study that “New research by scientists at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, shows the more arrogant students are about their intellectual abilities, the greater their academic success”.

Moreover, there are also some strong language in the media article that try to persuade reader’s mind to think that Intellectual Arrogance causes good academic performance like the first line of article, “New research by scientists at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, shows the more arrogant students are about their intellectual abilities, the greater their academic success” and in the middle of the article, “The researchers found those students were the most likely to have received high marks at the end of the semester”.  Next, the author inserts a short clip of a teen raising his both hands and said “I AM THE SMARTEST MAN ALIVE!”, which plays automatically. However, after the strong claim of the article about ¾, Sankar-Gorton changes her position by making a small disagreement with the study, she writes, “The researcher found those students were the most likely to have received high marks at the end of the semester. But while intellectual arrogance maybe associated with better grades, that doesn’t mean intellectually arrogant student get high grades because of their big heads”.

+ Research question: Does Intellectual Humility character is a special key that lead student to study hard in school?

- Null hypothesis: Intellectual Humility character makes student perform better in their academic.

- Alternative hypothesis: Intellectual Arrogance is the factor that lead student perform better in their academic.

* In the null hypothesis, Intellectual Humility character is an independent variable because Intellectual Humility character leads a student to perform better in their academic, which is a dependent variable due to the result from having an intellectual humility.

* In the alternative hypothesis, Intellectual arrogance is an independent variable due to the factor that it is the cause of a student to study hard in their academic life. Hard study is a dependent variable because it is the result from the cause.

There are two test on Intellectual Humility and Intellectual Arrogance. In the first study, there are 135 undergraduate students, 92 people are women and 43 people are men. In the sample of first test, there are a combination of population of White/ Caucasian is 61%, 13% of Asian/ Pacific Islander, 12% of Black/ African American, 11% of Hispanic and 3% of others race and ethnicity, the age range is between 18 to 23years (M=19.04). Experimenter divides each candidate to join a group of three to five person and give them a name tag by letter A through E. All of the candidates