Study Hours and Marks Prediction Using Linear Regression: A Reproducible Beginner Study

This educational preprint presents a reproducible Linear Regression study that predicts marks from study hours using a synthetic dataset of 20 records. It reports a fixed train-test split, a mean-value baseline, five-fold cross-validation, input validation, and unit tests. The work is intended for learning and beginner-friendly project understanding. It must not be used for real student assessment. Version 1.0 has not been peer reviewed. The upload package includes the research paper, source code, dataset, figure, citation file, license files, metadata file, checksum file, and publishing guide.