Casual Fridays
dmunger | December 11, 2009For last week's Casual Fridays study we asked respondents to answer James Lipton's famous ten questions from Inside the Actor's Studio. In case you've never seen the show, here are the questions:
What is your favorite word?
What is your least favorite word?
What turns you on?
What turns you off?
What sound or noise do you love?
What sound or noise do you hate?
What is your favorite curse word?
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
What profession would you not like to do?
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
What…
dmunger | December 4, 2009At the end of every episode of Inside the Actor's Studio, interviewer James Lipton asks his celebrity guests the exact same 10 questions, most notably, "What's your favorite curse word?"
But why should celebrities have all the fun? We thought it would be neat to ask the same set of questions to our readers -- and then see if we can find interesting, statistically significant patterns. Does age affect the responses? Gender? Your chosen profession?
Also, we're going to try something a little different this week. After you respond, you'll be able to check out the responses of others. While we…
dmunger | November 20, 2009We received an astonishing number of responses to last week's Casual Fridays study, which claimed to be able to identify what makes a good writer in just a few minutes.
Of course, I wasn't actually very confident that a brief survey could actually identify the factors that make a good writer. But I did have a hunch that there were certain traits that were more likely to be associated with good writing.
Was there a trick to the study?
Some respondents had a hunch that writing wasn't the only thing we were interested in. You were right -- we were also studying a completely unrelated phenomenon…
dmunger | November 13, 2009Some people just seem to be natural writers -- they can write perfect, elegant sentences with a minimum of effort. Some popular fiction novelists crank out 6 or more novels per year. Some bloggers write 10 or more posts per day. Others labor over every word, or simply choose careers that don't require a lot of writing. But are there universal characteristics that separate good writers from bad writers, and quick writers from slow writers?
I think I may have come up with a quick study that can answer those questions -- and like all Casual Fridays studies, it can be completed in just a few…
dmunger | October 30, 2009Political opinion polls are very tricky. Answers to questions depend on the order they're asked in, and on precisely how they are phrased. If you ask people whether they're in favor of killing unborn children, you'll get a much different response than if you ask if there's any situation where women should be allowed to terminate a pregnancy.
What's even more difficult is to assess public opinion on complex pending legislation. Most polls find that most Americans like the idea of requiring everyone to buy health insurance. But it's only a slim margin -- 56 to 41 percent. Kevin Drum cited a…
dmunger | October 23, 2009Political opinion polls are funny things. A recent poll suggests that Americans are much less concerned about global warming than they were a couple years ago. What happened? The science hasn't changed, and the world isn't putting out any fewer greenhouse gases.
It seems that respondents must simply be distracted by other things -- the economic crisis, perhaps, seems more important now. But when a pollster calls a survey respondent, other distractions are at play as well. There might be a screaming baby in the house. Or perhaps the respondent is missing his favorite TV show and isn't really…
dmunger | October 16, 2009Almost three years ago, we conducted our first-ever Casual Fridays study, where we asked who says "hi" to you while you're outside exercising. The results confirmed my suspicions:
Runners report that they say "hi" to walkers 57.1 percent of the time. But looking back at the other graph, walkers claim runners only say "hi" only 31 percent of the time. That's a massive difference -- a statistically significant one. A similar -- and also significant -- disparity holds for bikers and walkers.
But there were some unanswered questions back then. Are the people who answered our survey just…
dmunger | October 9, 2009For the first-ever Casual Fridays study nearly four years ago, we asked readers who said "hi" to them while they were out for a walk or run:
Today's entry is a survey designed to test a hypothesis I've been developing during my daily run. I think I've noticed a pattern in the responses of people I see while I'm running, and I want to find out whether it's a local quirk in the way people react to me, or if it's a universal phenomemon. The question centers around who says "hi" to you while you engage in your regular outdoor fitness activity. If you've never thought about this before, you might…
dmunger | October 2, 2009Whenever I create a demo for this site, there's always a balance: Do I make the demo dramatic, so it's most surprising when it works? Or do I make it less dramatic, so it works for more people? (There are other things to balance as well, such as my time and technical proficiency)
The Troxler effect is a particularly dramatic and simple demonstration of how much our visual system adapts to the environment. Just stare at the center dot in this figure for about 15 seconds, and the outer ring should fade completely from view!
But the illusion, like nearly all illusions, doesn't work for everyone…
dmunger | September 25, 2009A couple weeks ago I discussed the Troxler Effect in my column on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM. Some people said they couldn't see the illusion, so I thought it might be interesting to play around with the effect and see if people can see it under different circumstances.
For this week's Casual Fridays study you'll see a variety of different illusions, some of which will be easier to see than others. Give it your best shot at experiencing the illusion -- we'll see if we notice any patterns next week!
Click here to participate
As usual, the study is brief, with about 10 questions. However, because each…
dmunger | September 18, 2009Last week's Casual Fridays study was inspired by my annoyance at a website form which required me to constantly switch between typing in information and selecting it from a menu. I wondered if there was really any significant benefit to requiring the use of menus, when typing (for me, anyways) seemed so much faster.
So we developed two versions of the same simple 8-question quiz, one of which required users to alternate between menu-responses and typed responses, and the other which allowed respondents to type in each response. We asked respondents to answer the questions as quickly as…
dmunger | September 11, 2009We've all had the experience of a completely infuriating electronic form. My "favorite" example is a calendar application I once had that wouldn't let me delete numbers in certain places: there had to be something in the box, and you couldn't even delete a number temporarily to replace it with a new one. The only way to change a number was to carefully select the whole number with the mouse, then type the new number in. This is a very annoying step when you're trying to schedule an appointment with someone over the phone.
But I'm wondering if some of us are better than others at filling in…
dmunger | September 4, 2009Last week we asked readers how far they'd go to save a little money. Would you wash and re-use disposable plastic silverware? Get a "Doggie Bag" for your restaurant leftovers? Over 5,000 people responded to our Casual Fridays thriftfest last week -- the most popular Casual Friday ever, thanks to a link from Consumerist.com.
In fact, I was a little concerned that the large response from an external site would skew our results, but I couldn't find much indication of that -- we had over 600 responses before the link appeared on The Consumerist, and responses didn't change significantly…
dmunger | August 28, 2009Greta and I are back from a busy summer, the school year has started, and today's high temperature here in North Carolina will only be in the 70s! I can actually wear long pants again.
You know what that means: It's time to ramp up Survey Monkey for another season of Casual Fridays studies.
This week's study was inspired by a memory from my childhood. I always hated it when my mom used to mash the tiny remaining fragments of the old bar of soap into a brand-new bar, so we never got that "new soap" feeling. I realized that it was just a way of saving money, but I vowed that when I grew up and…
dmunger | June 5, 2009We'll be hosting Encephalon here at CogDaily on Monday -- it's a bimonthly festival of the best cognitive / neuroscience blog posts on the web. If you've got a post you'd like to see included, send an email to encephalon -- . -- host -- @ -- gmail -- . -- com (remove dashes).
In other site news, this week we're moving to our summer schedule, which means, due to our travel schedule, Casual Fridays are on hiatus until the fall. Also, you might see a few more repeat posts than usual. We'll try to stay on top of things, but in general, you should expect to see posts a little less frequently. Don'…
dmunger | May 29, 2009Last week we asked readers to rate a set of statements they might see on Twitter. The premise of our study was that sometimes it's difficult to decide whether someone is insulting you or complimenting you. But we were actually examining a slightly different question: what effect does an emoticon have on a statement? Can you make a negative comment seem "nice" just by adding a smiley or a wink afterwards?
Everyone saw the same 13 statements, presented in random order:
That's the most incisive comment I've ever seen
You are just so *interesting*
Yawn
You're as brilliant as you are attractive…
dmunger | May 22, 2009It's never been easy to communicate clearly online (or in person, for that matter). Often a statement meant as a compliment can be taken the wrong way. Or someone can mistake a statement made in jest for a serious statement. Now with tools like Twitter and texting limiting the total number of characters in a message, it may be even more difficult to convey nuance. Does everyone read these messages the same way? Or are some of us better-prepared to understand the nuances of online communication?
I think I may have come up with a (non-scientific) way to shed some light on those questions. You'…
dmunger | May 15, 2009Last week, we asked our readers whether certain characters or "stories" were sexist. I said that the survey was inspired by the story I had told the previous day:
Joe and Michelle are having dinner at a romantic restaurant. It's their first anniversary, and everything is perfect -- until an attractive woman walks past the table. Michelle notices that Joe casts a quick glance at the woman. Michelle flashes an annoyed glare at Joe, who knows he's in trouble. "I didn't mean to look at her," he pleads, "guys just can't help it when a pretty woman walks by." Michelle gasps. "B-but she's not as…
dmunger | May 8, 2009Yesterday, some commenters complained that the story I used to introduce the study I was discussing was sexist. They might be right. So let's see what our readers think -- what is sexist, and what's not?
In this study, you'll see eleven different scenarios, and you'll be asked to evaluate how sexist a person in the scenario is, or the scenario as a whole is. Next week, we should be able to have some idea of what types of things are seen as most obviously sexist, and whether there are differences in individuals' perceptions of sexism.
Click here to participate
As usual, the survey is brief,…
dmunger | May 1, 2009Listen to the following music clip.
Last week on Casual Friday, we asked our readers to explain what it's about, in concrete terms. Did you get it right?
Chances are, you did not. It's a selection from Claude Debussy's La Mer, from the movement intended to represent the wind and the sea. Only 36 of 357 respondents answered correctly. Even when I gave half-credit for mentioning either the wind, or a storm, or waves, or a boat, only an additional 90 got it. Most respondents -- over 200, in fact, got it completely wrong.
I picked seven different clips like this, from seven different works that…