Mathematics Exploration (SL)

Sleep Deprivation in Students

INTRODUCTION

If we look back at approximately 200 years ago, we are reminded of a society struggling with

famines, lack of sanitation and colonization. But if we look more closely at our comfort filled

present state, we can see that we face one dire “epidemic”, rightly termed by the Stanford

Medicine Department in the form of “Sleep deprivation”.1 Teens face a lot of societal and work

pressure to compromise on their sleep. Teens are biologically programmed to stay up late, but

then additional pressures further limit their amount of sleep which includes the myriad of

activities such as doing homework, attending school, carrying out social service projects, playing

sports or interacting with friends on social media.

I was particularly intrigued by a Stanford report, where it is recommended that teenagers should

have at least 8 to 10 hours of sleep but according to Nationwide Child Health it is reported that

children get an average of 7 hours of sleep around the world.2 Sleep deprivation increases the

likelihood of anxiety, depression, poor grades, poor focus and concentration. C: Good research. Student
demonstrates personal
interest in the topic.

Upon further research, I have found out that for every hour of lost sleep, the chances of feeling

sad or hopeless and committing suicide goes up by 38 percent (according to the Huffington

Post). An interview of Dr. Breus, a sleep specialist, published in the Huffington Post says that

young teenagers who do not get the requisite number of hours of sleep are generally more

1
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/10/among-teens-sleep-deprivation-an-epidemic.html

2
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/10/among-teens-sleep-deprivation-an-epidemic.html

1
inattentive, hyperactive and oppositional. 3 I am one of many students who face a daily struggle

between trying to get all my tasks complete and getting enough of sleep. As exams are

approaching, I know that my classmates are continuing to sacrifice on their sleep and the issue of

“Sleep Deprivation” has always concerned me a lot. So, when I came across an article in the
A: Rationale

Huffington Post, I instantly decided that I would base my Mathematics Exploration on Sleep

Deprivation.
A: Aim

Through this exploration, I intend to find out to what extent sleep determines a student’s learning

abilities by testing their short term memory and their focus4 and also whether sleep does

determine a student’s psychological state by administering the Goldberg’s depression test5.

Therefore, I will be using a sample size of 45 students from the age group 14-18 to get

statistically valid results. For me to be able to test the independence of the psychological state,

short term memory and focus against sleep, I will use Chi-Square test ( ) of Independence.

A,C: Very good introduction. The

communication is good and
THE CHI-SQUARED TEST OF INDEPENDENCE abundant display of personal
engagement.

The Chi-squared test is a statistical tool that ascertain whether the fit between the observed and

expected distributions is good.6 The chi- squared of test helps evaluate the degree of

independence between two variables of the same sample. If we take into consideration the

variables sleep and focus, they might be interrelated in two ways:

3
http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/7-scary-ways-sleep-deprivation-affects-teen-physical-and-
mentalhealth_us_55a7bd07e4b04740a3df0fb3
4
Survey given to High Schoolers
5
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/quizzes/goldbergdepression/

6
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~clight/chisquared.htm

2
  The two variables could be dependent which means that the lack of optimum amount of

sleep could impair focus or concentration.

 The two variables could be independent which means the focus or concentration of a
E: Hypothesis testing is
student doesn’t depend on sleep. beyong the SL course and
is relevant to exploration.

THE DATA OBTAINED

Now we look at the data obtained from the 45 students sampled for the exploration.7 We will

check the dependency of the three variables; concentration/focus, short term memory and

psychological state of the students to the independent variable, the average number of hours a

student sleeps for in a day.

Let us define the variables for the ith student, i=1(1)45, as follows:-

Yi= 0, if the ith student sleeps for less than 8 hours a day,

Yi = 1, if the ith student sleeps for 8 hours or more in a day.

(It is recommended by scientists that an average human requires around 8 hours of sleep to

properly function.8)

X1i= 0, if the ith student gets a score of less than 24 out of 40 in a test that measures the focus of

the student,
B: Explicit definition of the
variables used.

X1i=1, if the ith student gets a score of 24 or more on the focus test.

7
Data Obtained from the Surveys
8
https://sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need

3
(After conducting the survey, I realized the average score students got on the focus test was 24.

From this observation, I concluded that a score of less than 24 indicated that the student has a

short focus and vice versa.) C,D: An appropriate

logical implication.

X2i=0, if the ith student gets a score of less than 11 out of 30 in a test that measures the short term

memory of the student,

X2i=1, if the ith student gets a score of 11 or more on the short term memory test.

(After conducting the survey, I realized the average score students got on the memory test was

11. From this observation, I concluded that a score of below 11 indicated that the student has

poor short term memory and vice versa.)

X3i=0, if the ith student gets a score of 35 or more out of 55 in the Goldberg’s Depression Test,

X3i=1, otherwise.

(A score of 35 on 55 on the Goldberg’s test indicates that student is neither particularly happy

nor depressed. Each student taking the test has to rank each of 11 statements on a scale of 1 to 5;

ranking 5 for a statement means that the student is depressed and 1 for a statement meaning that

the student isn’t particularly depressed.)

Taking two variables into account at a time, the independent binary variable Yi, i=1(1)45, and any

one of the dependent variables will be tested for independence.

4
Analysis of the data

I will be calculating the minimum value of needed to determine whether the variables are not

independent which is also referred to as the critical value.9 The number of values that are free to

fluctuate in the table is known as the degrees of freedom (df). For a contingency table,

where there are ‘r’ number of rows and ‘c’ columns, the formula for calculating degrees of

freedom is given by: df = (r – 1)(c – 1)

I will then choose the level of significance, the area under the tail of the chi distribution curve

which is also known as the ‘rejection region’. The level of significance is then compared with

the calculated p-value of the data to decide whether the null hypothesis should be accepted or

rejected.

Figure 1: Chi-squared Graph10

B: Good definition of statistical

terminology in this section and
the next page.

The p-value is the probability of achieving the actual results different from the expected

values, assuming the variables are independent. The smaller the calculated p-value of the data,

9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXPBoFDqNVk
10
http://www.di-mgt.com.au/chisquare-calculator.html

5
the greater evidence is provided against the null hypothesis. To determine whether the observed

values from the sample and expected values from the specified distribution are statistically

different, the p-value is compared to the significance level. 11

If p-value ≤ α: The observed data does not fit well with the expected data and thus, we reject H0

as the data does not follow the distribution with the expected proportions.

If p-value > α: It cannot be concluded that observed data is different from expected data and we

fail to reject H0.

The tabulated value of is determined from the standard table of chi squared values12 for a

given significance level and degrees of freedom. If the calculated value of is greater than the

tabulated value, the variables are considered not independent.

I used the following methodology to conduct the test of independence:

1) The null hypothesis is first defined as H0: that the two variables are independent, and the

alternative hypothesis as H1: that the two variables are not independent.

2) The degrees of freedom is calculated using the aforementioned formula.

3) The significance level is chosen as 10%.

4) I rejected H0 if calc> tab, where, tab is taken from the table of critical values.

5) The calculated p-value will be used to affirm the results.

11
http://support.minitab.com/en-us/minitab-express/1/help-and-how-to/basic-statistics/tables/chi-squaregoodness-of-fit-
test/interpret-the-results/all-statistics-and-graphs/
12
http://sites.stat.psu.edu/~mga/401/tables/Chi-square-table.pdf

6
Using the procedure described, a 2 by 2 contingency table is constructed to calculate chi-squared,

p-value and the critical value using the graphic calculator for all the three variables. The level of

significance is chosen as 10%, therefore tab = 2.71 for df = 1.

TEST 1-

The null and alternative hypotheses are stated as the following:

H01: focus/concentration and sleep are independent.

H11: focus/concentration and sleep are not independent.

Table 1: Calculating the correlation of Figure 2: The chi-squared test of

Focus against the variable Sleep independence for table 1

X1i=0 X1i=1 SUM

Lack of focus Focus

Present
Yi=0 12 8 20

Yi=1 16 9 25

SUM 28 17 45

B: Use of ICT.

As calc< tab, we accept H01 and conclude that the Focus/Concentration and Sleep are
independent.

TEST 2-

The null and alternative hypotheses are stated as the following:

H02: Sleep and Short term memory are independent.

H12: Sleep and Short term memory are not independent.

7
 Table 2: Calculating the correlation of Short term Figure 3: The chi test of independence
memory against the variable Sleep for table 2

X2i=0 X2i=1 SUM

Weak Short Strong Short

Term Memory Term
Memory
Yi=0 13 6 19

Yi=1 16 10 26

SUM 29 16 45

As calc< tab, we accept H02 and conclude that the Short Term Memory and Sleep are
independent.
E: Error free Maths.
TEST 3-

The null and alternative hypotheses are stated as the following:

H03: Sleep and Psychological state are independent.

H13: Sleep and Psychological state are not independent.

Table 3: Calculating the correlation of psychological Figure 4: The chi-squared

state and Sleep test of independence for table 3

X3i=0 X3i=1 SUM

Depressed Balanced
Psychological Psychological
State State
Yi=0 7 0 7

Yi=1 20 18 38

SUM 27 18 45

8
As calc> tab, we reject H03 and conclude that the Psychological State of a teenager and
Number of hours he has slept are not independent.

Conclusion and Evaluation

Through this exploration, my aim was to find the correlation of average number of hours of

Sleep with variables like Short Term Memory, Focus and Depression among teenagers

through the chi-squared test of independence, in order to examine to what extent it is true that the

amount of sleep affects all these three variables. The chi-squared test revealed the following

conclusions: A: Student tries to

demonstrate fulfillment of
aim.

The results of Test 1 of the chi-squared test revealed that the amount of sleep that a student has is

independent to amount of focus he or she has. The results as shown in figure 2 accepted the null

hypothesis and are opposite to what I expected the results to be.

Research carried out by numerous organizations and educational institutions like Stanford show

that long term sleep deprivation affects learning processes and the attention span of the student.13

Lack of sleep increases the likelihood of having poor concentration. However, through my
C: Very good research.
exploration, I found minimal correlation between these two variables.

This could have been because of a relatively small sample size of 45 students and due to

individual concentration that is dependent on other factors like nutrition. While administering my

13
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/10/among-teens-sleep-deprivation-an-epidemic.html

9
test, some students had confusions regarding how to solve the tests and they could have

encountered external disturbances from their friends while filling the test.

However, according to the Scientific American,14 certain rare genetic mutations with the sleep

gene DEC2 allows some people to perform physically and biologically normally with 6 hours of

sleep or less. 4Ying-Hui Fu, a professor of neurology at the University of California, believes

that around 5% of the population is fine with only 6 hours of sleep. So this hypothesis could have

affected the results of my exploration.

The results of my second chi squared test (Figure 3) also show that the variables Short term

memory and Sleep are independent. As calc(0.223) < tab( 2.71), I accepted the null

hypothesis.

Although as proven by research and as reported by the Huffington Post, lack of sleep affects

memory, its effects are more pronounced on long term memory. During sleep the memories of

the day are consolidated and so we can see the effects of sleep deprivation better while testing the

long term memory of the student but it would be difficult to administer such a test. The variables

Short term memory and Sleep were seen to have almost no correlation.

However, it might be because of the commonplace words like “Pen”, “Sharpener” or “Eraser”

used on the test which allowed the students to easily do the Short Term Memory test and guess 2-

3 words on the test.

C,D: Student tries to find an answer to why
the result obtained contradicts the expected
result through indepth research. Evidence of
critical reflection on personal work.

14
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/genetic-mutation-sleep-less/

10
Finally, the results of the third test (Figure 4) showed that the variables Sleep and Depression

are not independent and it supported by original hypothesis. As stated earlier15, it is already a

proven fact that every hour of lost sleep is linked with 38% increase in the feeling of sadness in

teenagers and 58% increased risk of committing suicide. A : Very good

conclusion.

Bibliography
• https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/10/among-teens-sleep-deprivation-anepidemic.html

• http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/7-scary-ways-sleep-deprivation-affects-teen-physical-
andmental-health_us_55a7bd07e4b04740a3df0fb3

• http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/quizzes/goldbergdepression/
• http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~clight/chisquared.htm
• https://sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXPBoFDqNVk
• http://www.di-mgt.com.au/chisquare-calculator.html
• http://support.minitab.com/en-us/minitab-express/1/help-and-how-to/basicstatistics/tables/chi-
square-goodness-of-fit-test/interpret-the-results/all-statistics-and-graphs/

• http://sites.stat.psu.edu/~mga/401/tables/Chi-square-table.pdf
• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/genetic-mutation-sleep-less/

15
http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/7-scary-ways-sleep-deprivation-affects-teen-physical-and-
mentalhealth_us_55a7bd07e4b04740a3df0fb3

11
Appendix

Survey
*Names don’t have to be filled on the sheet even if filled they won’t be used for research purposes.
Information won’t be disclosed.

Q. How many hours a day do I sleep for? (Including naps)

Psychological Evaluation:

Please rate the following

1 being you disagree to the following statement and 5 being you fully agree to the statement.

I do everything comparatively slowly

1 2 3 4 5

I don’t have many expectations for my future

1 2 3 4 5

It takes me to time to register what I read

1 2 3 4 5

Not much gives me happiness anymore

1 2 3 4 5

I find it hard to make decisions

12
 1 2 3 4 5

I have lost interest in things that used to mean a lot to me

1 2 3 4 5

I feel unhappy

1 2 3 4 5

I feel restless and I can’t relax

1 2 3 4 5

I feel numb and dull (empty)

1 2 3 4 5

I feel low even when something good happens to me

1 2 3 4 5

I have lost or gained weight without being on a diet recently

1 2 3 4 5

13
Focus/Concentration Test:

You have a minute to write the actual colour of the texts given below.

BLUE RED
YELLOW BLACK
BLACK BLUE
ORANGE PURPLE
GREEN GREY
WHITE RED
YELLOW BLACK
BLUE ORANGE
RED BLUE
14
BLACK ORANGE
BLUE GREEN
YELLOW RED
GREY GREY
BROWN WHITE
BLACK RED
YELLOW GREEN
BLUE WHITE
ORANGE GREY
BLUE PURPLE

15
 RED GREEN
Memory Test

Students were expected to write down the names of all the possible objects they could remember
in a minute out of the total 30 objects given to them.

Data Collected from the above three tests:

Number Yi =No. of hours of sleep X3i= Psychological Mood

1 0 0
2 0 1
3 0 1
4 1 1
5 0 1
6 1 1
7 0 0
8 0 0
9 1 1
10 0 1
11 1 1
12 0 1
13 1 1
14 0 0
15 0 1
16 1 1
17 0 1
18 1 1
19 0 1
20 1 1
21 0 1
22 1 1
23 1 1
24 0 1
25 0 1

16
26 0 1
27 0 1
28 1 1
29 0 0
30 1 1
31 0 1
32 0 1
33 0 0
34 0 1
35 1 1
36 0 1
37 1 1
38 0 1
39 1 1
40 1 1
41 0 1
42 0 0
43 1 1
44 0 1
45 1 1

Number Yi= No. of hours of sleep X2i= Short term memory

1 1 1
2 0 0
3 0 1
4 1 1
5 1 1
6 0 1
7 0 0
8 0 0
9 1 0
10 0 1
11 1 1
12 0 0
13 0 0
14 0 1

17
15 0 1
16 1 1
17 0 1
18 1 1
19 0 0
20 0 1
21 0 1
22 0 0
23 1 0
24 1 1
25 0 0
26 1 0
27 0 1
28 1 1
29 0 1
30 1 0
31 0 0
32 0 1
33 1 0
34 0 0
35 0 0
36 0 0
37 1 1
38 0 0
39 0 1
40 1 1
41 0 1
42 1 0
43 0 1
44 0 1
45 0 1

Number Yi= No of hours of sleep X1i= Focus

1 0 0
2 1 1
3 0 0
4 0 0

18
5 1 0
6 1 0
7 0 0
8 0 0
9 0 1
10 0 1
11 1 1
12 0 1
13 1 0
14 0 0
15 0 0
16 0 0
17 1 0
18 1 1
19 0 1
20 0 1
21 0 1
22 0 0
23 1 0
24 0 1
25 1 1
26 0 0
27 1 0
28 0 0
29 0 1
30 0 1
31 1 1
32 0 1
33 1 1
34 0 1
35 0 1
36 1 0
37 0 0
38 1 1
39 0 1
40 1 0
41 0 1

19
42 0 1
43 1 1
44 0 1
45 1 1

20