Does raising your arm to the sky improve your cell reception?

We've all been desperate for cell service. Maybe you were at a music festival, or out in the woods, or just in your parents' backyard when your phone lost a connection. You probably instinctively threw your arm in the sky in an attempt to get better reception.I don't know why we do this. It's just a thing we've started doing. Does it help? No, not really.
I talked to Lin Zhong, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, about this common behavior and whether it actual