Casual Fridays
May 10, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
Things got a little crazy yesterday, with Greta headed off to VSS and the kids needing to be at three different places at once, so I'm presenting this week's Casual Friday results on Saturday.
Last week we asked our readers who their most important mentors were. We didn't mention it at the time, but the survey was inspired by the headlines that week about Barack Obama's pastor's seemingly unpatriotic sermons, and how those sermons reflected on Obama. Do pastors really have a huge influence on people's lives? Can we actually evaluate a presidential candidate based on something his pastor says?
By asking our readers who their most important mentors are, we thought we might get a better picture of what the actual role of a mentor is. Of course, our readers might not have the same religious background as the average American, so we also asked about religious preferences. Here are the results:
Less than a quarter of our respondents indicated being a part of a monotheistic religion, and almost 60 percent say they are atheist or agnostic. A quick search online shows that result to be dramatically different from the American population, which is generally reported to be about 85 percent Christian and less than 1 percent atheist/agnostic. Nonetheless, as a highly educated law-school graduate, Obama could be considered to be more like our readers than the general population, so perhaps our results do have some relevance for how we might expect his pastor to influence him. So let's take a look at who our readers think their most important mentors are.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:07 PM • Comments (12)
May 2, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
This week's Casual Friday is about mentors. We're curious who constitutes the most important influence on our readers, and whether we can identify any patterns in the results. So we've created a brief study that we hope will answer our questions. Simple as that.
Click here to participate
There are just a few questions, so the survey should only take a couple minutes to complete. There is no limit on the number of respondents. You have until Thursday, May 8 to respond. Then don't forget to check back on Friday, May 9 for the results!
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:39 PM • Comments (9)
April 25, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
Last week's Casual Friday study was all about money. The basic question was simply what it means to be rich -- how much income and net worth does it take before you consider someone to be wealthy? We received over 1,000 responses. Perhaps our most interesting finding was simply the diversity of opinions about what "rich" is. Here's how the responses broke down:
While most responses fell between $100 thousand per year and $500 thousand per year, 95 people said an income of below $100 thousand was still "rich," and 75 people said it would take $1 million or more per year to be wealthy! Another way to measure wealth is net worth -- the value of assets (bank account, stocks, real estate) minus debts. Here are those results:
The most common response was the traditional $1 million. But over 100 respondents gave values of $200 thousand or less, and more than 100 thought it would take more than $5 million to make a person rich.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:07 PM • Comments (21)
April 18, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
After spending all last weekend preparing our income tax return, I must have money on my mind. So this week's Casual Fridays study is about money. I don't want to tell you much more about it before you participate in the survey because it may affect the results, so just go ahead and click.
Click here to participate
There are just a few questions, so the survey should only take a couple minutes to complete. There is no limit on the number of respondents. You have until Thursday, April 24 to respond. Then don't forget to check back on Friday, April 25 for the results!
I'm not going to close comments on this entry because I think we could have an interesting discussion on this topic. However, please don't read the comments until you've participated!
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 11:53 AM • Comments (39)
April 4, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
Do you recognize this man? If so, you're not alone: over three-quarters of our readers were able to spot Richard Dawkins as he flashed by in a QuickTime video. So does this mean that the gatekeepers at Expelled who ejected the much-less-famous PZ Myers but not Dawkins two weeks ago are a bunch of incompetent oafs?
Not necessarily.
Many of those participating in the study came via Greg Laden's post on the subject, which included jumbo-sized pictures of both Dawkins and Myers. Maybe they had an unfair advantage over the harried gatekeepers for Expelled, who didn't have photos as a reference -- though it should be noted they did have Dawkins' larger-than-life image in the film itself.
Fortunately our study included some controls that may be able to help establish just how big a gaffe was committed that night. Viewers saw one of two different movies, which I'll show you again below (QuickTime required):
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:20 PM • Comments (11)
March 21, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
Everyone on ScienceBlogs seems to be talking about the latest Intelligent Design debacle. Apparently the extremely famous blogger PZ Myers attempted to attend a free screening of Expelled, a Ben Stein screed against "Darwinists." The security folks at the screening had been alerted that he would be there, and refused him admission. Yet the even more famous writer and anti-religion activist Richard Dawkins was allowed in.
Oh, the embarrassment! How could the ID movement neglect to ID one of its greatest enemies? Are they really that stupid?
On the other hand, maybe it's not so easy to identify even famous people when you're scanning a crowd. Put yourself in the position of one of the guards at the event. How easy would it be for you to pick your enemies out of the crowd?
This week's Casual Friday study attempts to find out. You'll be presented with a quick slide-show movie (QuickTime required) that may or may not contain a picture of Richard Dawkins, along with other famous and not-so-famous people. Then you'll be quizzed on what you saw.
We'll soon see how easy it is to be an ID movie screener.
Click here to participate
There are just a few questions, so the survey should only take a couple minutes to complete. There is no limit on the number of respondents. I'm going to be out of town next week, so you'll have an extra week to respond -- until Thursday, April 3. Then don't forget to check back on Friday, April 4 for the results!
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:22 PM • Comments (11)
March 14, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
Music has been associated with drug use for decades -- from the flower children smoking weed at Woodstock to jazz great Charlie Parker getting hooked on heroin, it seems that every type of music has a drug that we associate with it. Last month we discussed a study where college students were asked what type of substances they thought music fans of 14 different genres of music were likely to use. Here are the results:
But are these stereotypes accurate? Rentfrow and Gosling ran into an ethical barrier when they tried to confirm whether the stereotypes they found were true: They didn't want to ask under-age college students about their alcohol and illegal drug preferences.
Assisted by the anonymity of the internet, we decided to see if we could fill the void in Rentfrow and Gosling's work with our own survey, and despite the privacy concerns, we received over 500 responses. So how did our readers' preferences compare to the stereotypes identified by Rentfrow and Gosling? Here are our results:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:23 PM • Comments (11)
March 7, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
A couple weeks back we discussed a study examining stereotypes about music fans and how they related to actual fans' real preferences. Unfortunately, the researchers couldn't test one of the most intriguing stereotypes about music fans: the types of drugs and alcohol preferred by fans of particular genres.
So while we know the stereotype of rock fans is that they prefer beer and marijuana to wine and cocktails, the Rentfrow and Gosling study can't tell us whether the stereotype is true. Today's study addresses that limitation.
We're also addressing (in a limited way) the complaint that the genres Rentfrow and Gosling studied are too restrictive -- we're allowing respondents to type in their most and least favorite subgenres of their favorite musical genre. I'm not sure how much we'll be able to do with this information in data analysis, but we're willing to give it a shot.
Obviously this study does have a few privacy concerns, since some of the drugs we're asking about are illegal in most of the world. Our survey software does collect user IP addresses, which can give some information about where responses are coming from, and might be linked to an individual (for example, if you comment here using your real name). We'll delete that data as soon as we're done collecting it, but if you're concerned about privacy, you may not want to respond to this survey. Obviously that means our results won't be ideal, but hey, this is a casual study, remember? If you still want to give it a shot, then
Click here to participate.
As usual, the survey is short, with just 6 questions (although two of them require 14 separate responses). It should take just a couple minutes to complete. You have until Thursday, March 13 to respond. Don't forget to come back next Friday for the results!
Posted by Dave Munger at 11:53 AM • Comments (12)
February 29, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
[I've been sick the past couple days, so I'm not going to be able to post a new Casual Friday today. But here's an old one that many of our readers probably haven't seen.]
Last week's Casual Friday survey asked readers to describe how they expect other drivers to behave when merging onto the freeway. Now that the survey has been completed, I can let you in on a bit more of the observations that motivated the survey. I live in North Carolina, and I like to visit the big cities on the East coast, especially Washington and New York. This means I've done a lot of driving through Virginia, and I thought I'd noticed a peculiarity about Virginia drivers. In Virginia, it seemed to me, like no place else, the other drivers always expect you to get out of the way when they're merging onto the freeway. Sometimes it seems as if they don't even look to see if anyone's coming before they barge out into traffic.
But perhaps these incidents become exaggerated in my memory, and Virginia drivers aren't any better or worse than they are anywhere else. Now we have a chance to find out: we've again maxed out our survey engine, with 250 responses. I was hoping for a broader geographic distribution of response than we achieved: just 16.4 percent of respondents came from outside of North America. This contrasts to a sampling of 100 readers from our stats page this morning, where around 50 percent of visitors came from outside the U.S.
Possible explanations: people in other countries don't drive as much as Americans, or, since the survey was posted late Friday afternoon in the U.S. -- already late evening in Europe -- our response was skewed to North America (as I write this, at around 2 p.m. Eastern time, over 80 percent of recent visitors come from North America).
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:19 PM • Comments (19)
February 22, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
Last week we asked readers how they used their calendars: we were curious if the way people used their calendars said anything about how busy their lives were. We found out an awful lot about how readers use calendars, but we also found that there may not be much of a pattern to how calendars are used.
First, the basics: what type of calendars do CogDaily readers use?
It was a little surprising for me to see that over a third of our tech-savvy readers still rely on printed calendars -- 208 out of 612 respondents. Even if readers said they used one or the other type of calendar, we allowed them to indicate what type of printed and electronic calendar they used -- and over two-thirds of readers do use some form of printed calendar, even if their primary calendar is electronic. Most electronic calendars are on computers -- less than 10 percent of readers use a PDA, and most of the "other" responses were versions of online calendars, so the actual portion of computerized calendar users is even higher than what you see here.
We also asked readers how they used their calendars -- whether or not those calendars are electronic. Below are some of those results:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 4:27 PM • Comments (7)
February 15, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
Just a few months ago, I finally convinced Greta to convert her old paper appointment calendar to an electronic version. Now instead of writing her appointments down in a little book, she enters it in her computer or her PDA. It's now possible for me to see her schedule on my computer, and vice versa.
But even though we're both computerized, we use our calendars differently. I need an alarm to remind me of any event, but Greta simply checks her calendar every day to remind herself of her plans for the day. This leads to endless possibilities for confusion. She might enter an item on the calendar that I'm supposed to remember, but if there's no alarm, from my perspective, it might as well not be on the calendar.
So, we were wondering if there was any pattern to calendar use. Do busier people rely more or less on alarms? Does anyone use a paper calendar any more? Whose life would be affected most if they lost their calendar?
Click here to participate.
As usual, the survey is brief, with just 16 questions. It should only take a few minutes to respond. You'll have until Thursday, February 21 to respond, and there is no limit to the number of responses. And don't forget to check back next Friday for the results! (Maybe you should put it on your calendar....)
Posted by Dave Munger at 8:30 AM • Comments (12)
February 8, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
Last week's Casual Fridays study elicited quite a few confused reactions. Listeners heard short music clips and then were asked to indicate which color they associated with each piece from a list of 13 colors.
So were we able to come up with consistent results? Yes. For some of the clips, our 377 listeners were more likely to associate particular colors with that clip. Consider this clip:
Here are the survey responses:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:35 PM • Comments (16)
February 1, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
A while back we did a little non-scientific study on whether people experience different colors based on their emotions, and indeed found a very small effect.
For this week's study, we thought we'd see if we could extend those results to music. All we're asking you to do is listen to eight short audio clips, then say what color you associate the clips with.
Click here to participate
As usual, the study is short, with just 8 questions. The 8 clips range from 10 seconds to 70 seconds long. Most are shorter than one minute, so the whole thing should take less than 10 minutes to complete. You have until Thursday, February 8 to participate. There is no limit on the number of respondents.
Don't forget to come back next Friday to see the results!
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:46 PM • Comments (16)
January 25, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
Last week we asked readers how often they eat at buffet-style restaurants, where diners serve themselves unlimited portions of food from heated serving tables. The question was inspired by a post by ScienceBlogs editor Virginia Hughes, which was inspired by an innocuous comment I made as we were heading to our hotel restaurant table: "People in North Carolina are really into buffets." So, is North Carolina the champion state for buffets?
Nope.
In fact, North Carolina ranked 20th on our list. The number one state for buffets was Kansas, averaging 6 visits per month. Second on the list was New Mexico, followed by Indiana, Connecticut, and Nevada. Unfortunately, there's one problem with this list: the results aren't even close to statistically significant. Despite over 400 total responses, we only received two responses from Kansas. There were three responses from New Mexico, six from Indiana, and five from Connecticut -- that's not nearly enough to base any sort of generalization on, especially since there's only one data point per respondent. It also means that my initial claim, that North Carolinians like buffets more than average, is not supported or falsified.
Another problem with the data is the fact that so few of our readers report eating at buffet-style restaurants with any sort of regularity. Here's how the data breaks down:
Eighty-five percent of respondents ate at buffet restaurants less than once a month, and only 10 of our 409 respondents reported eating at buffet-style restaurants more than 3 times per month. Since one of those ten happened to be from Kansas, Kansas zoomed to the top of our list.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:43 PM • Comments (10)
January 18, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
I'm at the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference this weekend, and I wasn't planning on doing a Casual Friday this week. But Virginia Hughes gave me an idea for a really quick one. What state boasts the most-frequent buffet-style restaurant diners?
Click here to respond
This survey has a mere two questions, and you have until Thursday, January 24, to respond.
Posted by Dave Munger at 4:23 PM • Comments (11)
January 11, 2008
Category: Casual Fridays
Last week we asked our readers about New Years' resolutions. We said we wanted to know whether resolutions made on New Years' Day were any more effective than commitments made at other times of the year. We are interested in that question, but we didn't tell you about the question that interested us the most: How many different resolutions should you make?
Our son Jim made so many resolutions this year that he actually organized them into subcategories. This struck us as not a very good idea -- if you make lots and lots of resolutions, then you may not be as committed to each one. At the time, we didn't have any data to back up our hunch. Now we do. We asked readers which of 13 common New Years' resolutions they had made this year, and we also asked how successful they had been so far in keeping to those resolutions. Only about a week into the year, the average success rating of our 228 respondents was just 59 percent. And indeed, there was a significant negative correlation (r = -.15) between number of resolutions made and success rating.
So it seems that making too many resolutions is indeed a problem: the more resolutions you make, the less likely you are to keep them. The correlation did not hold up for previous years, however. One possible explanation for this is that respondents forgot about some of the resolutions that they didn't manage to keep.
But there were also lots of other interesting results in our study. As we mentioned last week, newspapers, web sites, and blogs like to give top ten lists of resolutions. Usually, however, these reports don't offer any data to back up their claims. Did our respondents rank their own resolutions in a similar order? The table below compares our results to two of the top-ranking lists of resolutions from a Google search:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:53 PM • Comments (12)
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