As you probably know, I've spent a decent chunk of my year working on the ever-interesting spectacle of school team projects. In most team projects, you have to review one another's contributions at the end of the class. These peer evaluations provide some semblance of accountability, so that your professor will know whether someone did exceptional work or kept slacking off - or, heaven forbid, tried to obstruct the project with toxic behaviors (fortunately, I've never had the pleasure of experiencing the latter).

Since I've had seven different team projects during the 2014 calendar year with 17 different partners (not including the two people who dropped out of the groups, and counting my two repeat partners only once), I decided to go back in time and compare the team evaluations I've written. I had some fun with Microsoft Excel's correlation coefficient formula, and here are my not-too-scientific findings:

• Being married was the strongest predictor of success in a team project.
  
• Introverts were somewhat more effective than extroverts (although there were several students who were near the center of the personality spectrum, who didn't have as much of an impact).
  
• Female students were somewhat more effective than males.
  
• Older students tended to be more effective than younger ones.
  
• People with dark hair were more effective than those with blond hair. Go figure.
  
• Students from my own program of study were generally better than those on other degree paths.
  
• The difference in effectiveness between white students and black students was negligible.

Don't expect this less-than-scholarly research to appear in your favorite academic journal.

Still some interesting findings.
Perhaps it's in the DNA.

Absolutely fascinating

I love how you keep track of this kind of stuff. Excited to see potentially more statistical data in the future!

Hylian: Thanks! Despite the small sample size, I don't know if anyone's ever done a "study" quite like this before, focusing on the student's perspective. I'll let you know if I produce any more statistical stuff.

I neglected to mention this in the original post, but teammates I picked myself performed slightly better than those that were assigned to my group. It's comforting to know that I'm not totally devoid of HR skills! In addition, teams performed much more effectively in classes where we collaborated on team assignments during class time and had periods set aside in class for team members to introduce themselves and share contact information. The more time teams spent together, the better their work.

I forgot to update this topic after I graduated in May. After adding the data for my final semester, these trends remained largely the same. However, the larger sample size reduced the correlation in most categories.

On average, married students still delivered better outcomes than single students, but being married is no longer the biggest predictor of success. Still, students who were married, introverted, female, older, and dark-haired were better on average than those who were not, and the gap between white and black students was barely statistically significant. In addition, my latest "research" showed that being able to choose my own teammates tended to lead to a better experience.

Again, take these findings with a grain - or possibly a dump truck - of salt.
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Edited by: Bibby, Sep 23rd, 2015 @ 2:40 pm

This is so interesting haha. I love these statistical updates

(btw wow I haven't posted here in a while)