Differences in Mathematics Test Scores between Male and Female Students

Statistics for Business
Student Name:
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29th May 2019

Abstract
This study aimed at investigating whether significant differences exist in the average mathematics test
scores between the female and male students’ scores. The study builds on the premise of past studies
that have had contradictory findings where some have pointed out that male students perform better in
mathematics tests than their female counterparts. Others have also pointed out that female students in
the recent past perform better than male their counterparts in mathematics tests while few other
studies have shown that there is no significant differences in the average scores in mathematics tests for
the male and female students. A sample of 100 college students was used for this study and their scores
in the recent mathematics test examined. Results showed that on average, male students perform
better than the female students.
Introduction
In the past years, scholars have tried to research on whether there exists any significant differences in
the mean scores for the male and female students in mathematics test. A study by Charles and Bradley
(2009) showed that there is a significant difference in the mathematics test scores for the male and
female students (Charles & Bradley, 2009). The authors argued that the male students perform better in
mathematics as compared to the male students. Another study by Wang et.al (2012) suggested that
there is no significant difference in the mathematics skills of the female and male students. The authors
found out that the scores by the male and the female do not differ (Wang, et al., 2012). This study
therefore sought to find out whether the same findings by other authors apply in the context of
Australian college. On this premise, the study sought to investigate whether the average scores of the
male and female students in a selected college in Australia differ.
Research question
The study sought to answer the following research question.
Is there significant difference in the average scores of the mathematics test for the male and female
students?
Research hypothesis
The study sought to answer the following research hypothesis.
Null hypothesis (H0): There is no significant difference in the mean score in mathematics test for the
male and female students.
Alternative hypothesis (HA): There is significant difference in the mean score in mathematics test for the
male and female students.
This hypothesis was tested at 5% level of significance using an independent samples t-test.
Methodology
A cross-sectional study was performed to investigate the relationship between gender and the student
scores in a mathematics test. Both descriptive and inferential statistics was employed to investigate the
relationship between the variables. Some of the descriptive statistics employed include the mean,

media, mode, standard deviation as well as skewness and kurtosis. For the inferential statistics, we
employed the independent samples t-test to analyze the significant difference in the means.
Data
Table 1 below presents the data set used in the study.
Table 1: Data
S/no. Male scores in
mathematics
Female scores
in mathematics
S/no. Male scores in
mathematics
Female scores
in mathematics
S/
no.
Male scores in
mathematics
Female scores
in mathematics
1 86 70 35 76 77 68 85 80
2 89 61 36 71 70 69 67 62
3 63 55 37 78 82 70 66 80
4 85 81 38 85 61 71 73 55
5 87 82 39 72 56 72 65 62
6 62 80 40 66 81 73 62 56
7 77 74 41 70 85 74 69 73
8 66 74 42 77 71 75 61 79
9 71 73 43 65 75 76 72 78
10 62 75 44 65 74 77 78 71
11 72 79 45 72 73 78 68 67
12 78 56 46 62 72 79 61 58
13 89 83 47 68 72 80 65 65
14 67 73 48 71 84 81 89 58
15 70 70 49 77 55 82 83 67
16 87 85 50 62 64 83 86 55
17 68 61 51 78 67 84 80 55
18 64 76 52 81 68 85 63 73
19 90 64 53 71 75 86 65 79
20 70 82 54 86 57 87 86 62
21 85 84 55 64 74 88 79 74
22 63 69 56 77 70 89 63 57
23 68 69 57 67 71 90 77 82
24 86 77 58 72 70 91 86 71
25 85 59 59 68 85 92 79 69
26 70 83 60 81 74 93 78 74
27 66 57 61 78 59 94 83 75
28 60 82 62 77 84 95 64 77
29 86 72 63 61 78 96 79 79
30 72 79 64 64 55 97 82 72
31 63 75 65 78 78 98 85 67
32 61 75 66 81 55 99 84 66
33 80 77 67 66 57 100 62 56
34 80 62