The Interesting Things Students Learned In The Statistical Methods Course

At the end of Term I, students in the Elmira College Statistical Methods Course split into teams and completed a final project that required them to use the skills learned throughout the course. The two teams, Team Boolean and Team Flaming Avocados, used student surveys to collect data, math skills to analyze the results, and communication skills to put together a presentation and share what they learned. The teams studied different EC student groups and what they discovered often surprised them.

Team Boolean included Nursing majors Melissa Chilson ’26 and Jamie Wagner '26 and Biochemistry major Rediet Fekade '25. They were curious about diversity among the Elmira College Men’s and Women’s Soccer teams. They wanted to understand the different student habits, like how much students study or how many hours a night they sleep, and how much were students affected by those habits.

“A lot of the things we learned aren’t what we assumed,” said Wagner. For example, Team Boolean learned that there are an equal number of U.S. citizens and students from other countries playing on the teams, most soccer players sleep seven hours a night, nearly all soccer players listen to music while they study, and they generally study about two hours a day.

While the information proved interesting, the members of Team Boolean had to acknowledge bias in their results because not everyone on both teams responded to the survey, ruling out a perfect comparison of the two groups. Also, because there are more male soccer players, they had a higher percentage of male responses.

Despite the bias, the team members said they learned many skills, from thinking critically about how to best collect data to inputting that data into Excel and creating pivot tables to parse the results for analysis.

Team Flaming Avocados included Childhood Education major Verity Realmuto '26, Adolescence Education major Samantha Lawyer '26, and Nursing major Jordan Russell '25. They investigated the social media habits among Elmira College first-year students. Like Team Boolean, Team Flaming Avocados inadvertently introduced bias into their collection methods, finding that the sample size was too small and not diversified enough. Most of the students surveyed live on campus and only seven male students responded. Another factor that may have skewed the results was that the information was self-reported, so there wasn’t a way to know if students, whether intentionally or unintentionally, provided the most accurate information.

“If we could do it again we would survey more students,” said Realmuto, a Childhood Education major.

Like Team Boolean, Team Flaming Avocados found that a majority of students get seven hours of sleep each night. Their research indicates that the median number of hours students spend on their phones is six hours and that Tik Tok and Instagram are their preferred social media channels.

A key difference in the teams was their reliance on the analytics software used. Team Boolean used Excel to compute the statistics and analyze the data, and then they used Posit, an open-source tool, to create graphs. Team Flaming Avocados skipped Excel and just used Posit, leveraging code to conduct an analysis of the data.

No matter the method, both teams said they learned important skills to apply in their futures.

“I’m in Elementary Education, so these skills could help research how kids relate to different things,” said Realmuto.

Lawyer recommends the class to anyone who has an interest in statistics and she particularly enjoyed the opportunity to code.

“This course makes you rethink things and look at them differently,” said Wagner.

“We learned how to word questions carefully to get the answers we wanted,” said Fekade. She believes the course will be particularly valuable for her future studies in Biochemistry, where she intends to do a lot of research. Yet Fekade also believes the course is valuable for nearly every student.

“I feel like all majors need these skills,” she said. “In marketing, you have to see how to target your customers, collect data, and develop a business plan, and Education majors can learn better ways to understand students. Research is included in everyday life, so knowing how to collect and analyze data is important.”