Maria is a college professor, and she wonders how the scores compare on her midterm and her final. She teaches two sections of a course, and each section has 180 students. She decides to take a random sample of 10 students from each section. For those students, she'll calculate the mean midterm score and the mean final score. She plans to look at the difference between those means.

Like many students at university, you may be unhappy about the results you attain in exams. you may feel that even with all you are doing there must be something more -- or different-- you could be doing to get better grades. we have all at some time or other heard of that student who only studies a couple of hours for final exams and scores a's every time. we stand in awe of those who seem to breeze through without undue effort and seem to need very little in the way of studying to nail an exam. the reasons for success, in what i think are the vast majority of cases, are less esoteric than many students think: successful students consistently apply a series of productive strategies with view to attaining clearly identified learning and grade goals throughout the academic term.