Question

James believes the honor roll students at his school have an unfair advantage in being assigned to the math class they request. He asked 500 students at his school the following questions: "Are you on the honor roll?" and "Did you get the math class you requested?" The results are shown in the table below:
Honor roll Not on honor roll Total
Received math class requested 315 64 379
Did not get math class requested 41 80 121
Total 356 144 500

Help James determine if all students at his school have an equal opportunity to get the math class they requested. Show your work and explain your process for determining the fairness of the class assignment process.

Answer 1

If the system is fair, one would expect that the same proportion of students received their requested math class, independent of whether they are on the honor roll or not. We have that from the 356 students on the honor roll, 315 received their requested class. This percentage is around 88.5%, hence 88,5% of honor students get the class they requested. Of the 144 students not on the honor roll, 64 get their requested class. The ratio is 64/144=44.4%. We see that the percentage is a lot smaller, almost half of the percentage for the honor students. Hence, we have that there is actually injustice since if you are an honor student you have almost double the chance to get your preferred class.