Will attending statistics lectures improve your grade? The title of this exercise is a topic of interest. As a research question, it probably cannot be answered. Let's try to formulate a research question that can be answered with data. Here is one possibility:

Do students who attend more than 80% of the statistics lectures in a particular statistics class receive higher grades than those who do not?

(a) Think about randomly assigning students to two groups: those who will attend at least 80% of the lectures and those who will not. Explain why this statistical study would be unethical.

(b) We can keep careful attendance records and classify the students at the end of the semester into the two groups. We can then compare the average grades. Explain the kind of conclusion you can draw from this statistical study. How would this kind of conclusion differ from the kind of conclusion that you could draw from the unethical study?