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

Based on the table:

Honor students:

315/356 = 88.48% is the total number of people who got the math class requested whereas

Non-honor students:

64/144 = 44.44% did not get the math class requested

So…

They will not have equal chance to get the math class they demanded, if both percent’s were equal, it would be just. For honors students, 88% of them will get the class they demanded, but for non honors students it's 44%.