Hiroko Sayama is a scientist at New York University, and he discovered that if you surround yourself with friends that recieve good grades, your grades are likely to go up as well. Sayama conducted an experiment at Maine-Endelwood High School in NY to test his hypothesis. Students at the High School had 160 kids fill out a survey of their friends, and then they got their class rank. The effect on kids that had a class rank of around 100 was that they went up 10 to 15 spots from their junior to senior year if they had friends that were in the top 50 of their class rank. Other students that hung out with less academic kids had their grades drop between years. Sayama's conclusion was that students get subconscious influences by their peers with their study habits, and how well they do on tests compared to their friends. Some students like Mark Pachucki are skeptic about the study and although there are some things that vary, like new teachers, the data shows that hanging out with smarter friends might make you smarter as well.
http://www.livescience.com/27113-good-grades-are-contagious.html
NOS Themes:
1) Science is based on evidence - In the study students grades went up when they had smart friends.
2) Importance of Repeatibility - 160 students were "experimented" on so it wasn't just based off of a few people.
3) Science is Subject to debate - Students like Mark might not think that the experiment was legitimate, which could lead to more experiments to see if Sayama's theory is really true.
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