Monday, August 12, 2013

STATS: The Stuff We All Agree On (Issue 1 of Many) #Hashtag

When designing the survey, I tried to balance the questions so the each was equally likely to be chosen. I was only somewhat successful. It turns out there are some things that we agree on. 

I would rather go without air conditioning than sit in the room with the creepy mirrors. It turns out that I am in the minority. Most of us wouldn't mind the possibility of surreptitiously being observed as long as the temperature was comfortable. Almost all of us picked reading over writing, regardless of what cohort we were in. Perhaps I should have lowered the the number of pages to be written; perhaps we are all burnt out from writing papers for the last week. It looks like no one is going to mind reading about Intellectual Character over the abbreviated summer break.

Another common trait, (not graphed) was that we are cheap. We picked free Pepsi over costly Coke at a 3:1 ratio. We would also rather walk a mile than pay to park closer at a similar ratio.

What makes us different?

I was not surprised by this one. Math and science majors would rather write about quantitative analysis in Lakin. History and political-science majors would rather get involved in the political process via an advocacy letter. So, no surprises there. That leads us to the next questions.

I did not see this one coming. Humanities folks have a significant fear of failure. STEM people have a low tolerance for physical pain. Who would have thought that?

Look for more to come.

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