Hunter Lacamu

Preference of Genres at Austin High School

AP Statistics
Mr. Kiker 6th period
12/2/14

Hunter Lacamu
6th period
Stats in Action
Music has and always will be a large part of my life, and that is so for a lot of
people. The question I am analyzing is for those who are curious as to what the dominant music genre is especially among students of Austin High School. In order to find
our what the students of Austin High listen to for the most part, a survey was conducted
to see which out of main genres (jazz, hip-hop, rock, alternative, metal, classical, singersongwriter, pop, or indie) are the most prevalent in students music tastes. To conduct
the experiment thoroughly and without bias, I will be utilizing chance and randomization
to decide which students I will survey. I will use die to decide the student in the current
area of the school I am in that I will choose ( if I roll a 6 I will survey the 6th person I
see). I will also use die to determine the order in which i ask different students which
genres they like.
I predict that as a genre rock and hip-hop will prevail because they encompass a
large selection of music and from personal experience, people that I know listen to
those genres consistently. I am hoping that my data will provide a new look on the matter, and that maybe people listen to other genres more than I expect. There is also the
possibility that all the genres are fairly evenly distributed, and people might prefer many
genres all the same.
My objectives in this analyses were driven by my love for music and my desire to
know more about its influence on society. While the question I am analyzing does not
give a great reading on how impactful music is, it allows me to see what people listen to
and to decide for myself what kind of impact it might have had on those people. It also

gives me an indication as to what the most popular genre is in the school, which is a
small sample, but is a good way to start thinking about what society as a whole listens
to and why. I predict that rock will be the prevalent genre in Austin High
Gathering this information is not an easy task though, finding unbiased individuals who will answer my survey and sign off that they did is a challenge on its own. What
I say can heavily influence the way that people view what I am asking and can make
them feel inclined to answer a specific way in order to please me ( or possibly to spite
me). Every approach has to be different to ensure that when I gather information is answered to the best of the persons ability. The purpose of this experiment is not to produce an outcome that I want so I do not want my evidence to appear that I leaned specifically to a certain genre and therefore influenced people to pick because I failed to
randomize order or something else.
The way I approach finding individuals is key in this experiment, I cannot seem to
be at a convenience when asking the questions. The people I ask should be diverse, It
is not wise for me to take more than one person that is part of a group hanging together,
because I wish to include various sources of opinions and this that hang near each other are likely to answer similarly. The time period in which I look for people matters
greatly as well. In order to unbiasedly select individuals I must select people before and
after school.
Genres of music are broad and often blend into each other which can confound
my data. Sub genres must be represented through the broader genre that they best fit
under, so with that being said my data can not truly represent Austin High Schools music taste, but it can come close and give a general idea of what that would look like.

My data ended up being very unimodal (as seen in my graph in appendix A) with
results that I did not quite expect. According to my data the most preferred genre at
Austin High was by far hip-hop which took in 30% of the votes. Rock ended up tying for
the second most preferred genre along with alternative.I expected genres like pop and
indie to have more votes because they wound up with low percentages as well as classical. The singer-songwriter genre did not get a single vote during the experiment and it
made me feel like it was underrepresented in this experiment. If I had a larger sample
size my data would be better represented and I would most likely have votes for the
genre that didnt receive any.
My experiment like practically all experiments was not without flaws. Rock and
alternative are very similar genres and alternative usually falls under the genre of rock,
so if I had left rock as the default for both genres it might have gotten more votes. There
are also a lot of inconsistencies when surveying people, anytime someone did not hear
a particular sub genre they consider their favorite they were hesitant to choose a genre.
The subjectivity of music also plays a large role in what people chose, people can like
more than one genre and choosing one genre can be conflicting and may not allow for
the best representation of music choice among students.
My data may not have been a perfect representation of what I was looking to
find, but it was informative nonetheless. I realized that there is not as much indie and
pop preference as I would have first thought. Hip-hop is a very influential genre, and it
seems like that is also the case in Austin High School. My findings help me prove that
peoples music taste can be strong in a specific genre.

Works Cited
Benner, Sam. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Notzon, Bacio. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Garcia, Diana. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Tamara. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Mueller, Justin. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Chiang, Thomas. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Celeste. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Sam. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Pat. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Nancy. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Bock, Cameron. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Mellanie. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Welch, Jordan. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Hernandez, Kyra. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Brown, Julien. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Ernest. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Catalan, Daniel. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Gomes, Ariel. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Segura, Buster. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Waites, Bryce. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Crenshaw. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.

Rodela, Harmony. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.

Ariana. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Hoopingarner, Sam. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Medina, Martin. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Alic. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Victoria. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Atkins. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Chase. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.
Dantemee. Telephone interview. 10 Dec. 2014.

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D