Asians A nd T heir “Superiority”

Please do not take any of the following information in a negative way. No member of this group means to offend anyone. Except ____, in compensation you can throw eggs at him if you like.

Asians And Their “Superiority” By: Excellent Student #1 Excellent Student #2 Excellent Student #3

Introduction Excellent Student #1: “Asians are better in every aspect of the academic world than non-asians!” Excellent Student #2: “ Really?!?! Wait, I don’t believe you!” Excellent Student #3: “ Let’s find out!”

We chose this topic to answer the following questions: 1) Does the Asian stereotype hold up in Canyon Crest Academy? 2) Do Asians take more challenging classes? 3) Are those Asians the high-scoring students in the classrooms?

1st Step • Each of us surveyed a different teacher during lunch and 3rd period. We used their rosters to see how many Asians there were out of all the students in their AP class and how many were in their normal class.

Why complete the 1st step? So, to collect data on the proportions of Asians who took more challenging classes and whether teachers thought Asians were the higher-scoring students in their classes, we surveyed teachers who taught both an AP class and a normal version of the same class (for example, AP US History and regular US History). It was difficult to find teachers who met these requirements, however. There were no English or Math teachers (besides statistics) that we knew of who taught both AP/honors and a regular version of the class.

For some of the classes, we also classified the Asian students into different subcategories (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Other). This data will be used to create a probability model, comparing the observed probabilities (our data) against expected probabilities. The expected probability for each ethnicity was found on a credible website.

The percentage of Asians in each of the classes was calculated and shown in the graph. It seems that there is a higher percentage of Asians in AP classes than regular classes. Analysis

Inference • We used the probability model to perform a goodness of fit test, to see if the observed distribution is significantly different from the hypothesized distribution. • Conditions: All individual expected counts have to be at least 1, no more than 20% of them can be less than 5, and independence. All the conditions are met, so we can continue. • H0: the observed proportions are the same as the hypothesized proportions Ha: at least 1 of the observed proportions differs from the hypothesized proportions The P-value is larger than 0.05, so we fail to reject the null hypothesis. There isn’t evidence that the observed proportions differ significantly from the hypothesized proportions. df = 5 P-value = 0.998797

H0: There is no association between class difficulty and whether students are Asian or non-Asian. Ha: There is an association between class difficulty and whether students are Asian or non-Asian. Do Asians take harder classes in general? Conditions are met: Expected counts have to be at least 1, no more than 20% are less than 5, and independence. • The P-value is smaller than 0.05, so we reject the null hypothesis. There is significant evidence that there is an association between students’ ethnicity and whether they take harder classes. df = 1 P-value = 0.00217727

Then we used a 2-proportion z-test to see if there were significantly more Asians in the AP classes than non-Asians. The conditions are all met: • SRS, • Independence. • p1= proportion of Asians in AP classes • p2= proportion of non-Asians in AP classes • H0: p1=p2 • Ha: p1>p2 P-value = 0.0010896 The P-value is smaller than 0.05, so we can reject the null hypothesis. We conclude that here is significant evidence that the proportion of Asians in AP classes is greater than the proportion of non-Asians.

It is a stereotype that Asians take harder math classes. We used another significance test to see if this is true. First, we made two-way tables for the AP Statistics and regular Statistics classes. • p1= proportion of students in AP Statistics who are Asian • p2= proportion of students in regular statistics who are Asian • H0: p1=p2 • Ha: p1>p2 P-value = 0.016488 The P-value is smaller than 0.05, so we reject the null hypothesis. There is evidence that the proportion of students in AP Statistics is significantly greater than the proportion of students in regular Statistics who are Asian.

To see if our conclusions applied to the classes individually, not just in general, we also used the same test for the AP Economics and regular Economics class. P-value = 0.4891 The P-value is larger than 0.05, so we fail to reject the null hypothesis. There is not significant evidence that the proportion of students in AP Economics is greater than the proportion in regular Economics.

Obstacles One major obstacle that we encountered was, "How do we know if a student is an Asian just by their name?" We decided that the student's last name was to be the deciding factor along with our prior knowledge of the students. This is definitely not the appropriate way to conduct this research; however, the circumstances (i.e., time limit, lack of practicality in asking every student if they were Asian or not, fear of response biases...etc) were such that there was no other way.

Another error in this data collection is that we only incorporated the science, history, and math departments. The English department is not represented in this study. It is because there are no English teachers at this time who teach a class and its corresponding honors/AP course. Though we could have surveyed two English teachers, we felt this would add an uncontrollable variable – namely "Teacher's style of teaching". One teacher and his/her class could be relatively easier to achieve an "A" in, compared to another teacher and his/her class. Hence, with a heavy heart, we left the English department out of this study.

Another dividing point was when we had to distinguish between an "Asian" and a "non-Asian". It could not be simply by their grades, because then, _________ and __________ would be "honorary" Asians. It could not be if they were Chinese or not, because there are other types of Asians. Hence we started out by including the popular Asian groups, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Indian.

We did not think we would face any complications, but alas we did. When discussing this project with a representative of the history department at CCA, he innocently asked whether we included Armenians as Asians. Truth to be told, none of the group members knew what Armenian last names sounded like. We could have researched the names on Google and become experts on Armenian last names, but we were too far in the project to restart. Also, some last names are used by more than one group, for example, Lee, or Dang, so unless we knew the student personally, we might’ve mistakenly put them in the wrong group. Hence, this is a major flaw in our study. We only included Asians whose last names were easily distinguishable.

Conclusion • Using the probability model and a chi-squared test, we found no evidence that the observed proportion of Asian groups at Canyon Crest Academy differed from the expected proportions found online. The fact that Canyon Crest Academy's population does not necessarily represent other populations in San Diego, but does represent the population of the United States (or at least the Asian population) is very interesting. However, this could be because of the certain classes we collected data from, and therefore would not represent the whole school.

Using a chi-squared inference test, we discovered that there was significant evidence of an association between a student’s ethnicity and whether they took harder classes or not. • Note that this does not mean that their ethnicity causes them to take harder classes. • To find out what kind of association there was, we performed a two-proportion z-test. The test showed that there was significant evidence that there was a higher proportion of Asians than non-Asians in AP classes. It is true that Asians generally take harder classes!

We also did significance tests for two specific classes (Statistics and Economics), to see if our conclusions also extended to the classes individually. • We concluded that the proportion of students in AP Statistics who are Asian is significantly greater than the proportion of students in regular Statistics who are Asian. However, we failed to conclude that the proportion of students in AP Economics who are Asian is significantly greater than the proportion of students in regular Economics who are Asian. • So, in general, Asians take harder classes, but in specific subjects, they sometimes do not.

Thank you for listening … and being a SUPERLY AMAZINGLY FUNNY CLASS =) • P -HAT & Y -HAT = > 4 LIFE => <3

Asians A nd T heir “Superiority”