Casual Fridays
dmunger | January 5, 2007We've been doing a lot of social psychology on Casual Fridays lately, what with gift preferences and email sign-offs. So this week we thought we'd get back to basic perception research. We'll see if we can uncover fundamental perceptual differences with a simple online test. I can't tell you much more about the study with spoiling the results, but this one should be quick and fun, so why not give it a try?
Click here to participate in the study.
As usual, the study is brief, with just 11 quick questions, so it should only take a minute of your time. You have until 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on…
dmunger | December 22, 2006So it's December 22, and you are one of the few people who hasn't already bagged out of work to get ready for the holidays. You've been absolutely deluged -- swamped with work -- the entire month of December. You've hardly had time to think about Christmas, let alone shop. But now, with the holiday just a couple short days away, you're faced with the shocking truth. You'll be attending three different Christmas parties (or whatever alternative you prefer). Gifts will be exchanged. What's an overworked procrastinator to do? Would gift certificates be appropriate? What about cash? Everyone can…
dmunger | December 15, 2006Yesterday's report on gift preferences was the inspiration for this week's study. Are some types of gifts simply inappropriate? If it seems clear that not much thought went into a particular gift, does that make it less "special"?
Or does the simple fact that a gift was given make up for any faux pas on the part of the gift-giver? And can we find any relationship between the type of person receiving a gift and what sort of gifts they find appropriate.
Click here to participate in our study and help us find out.
As usual, the study is brief, with just 5 questions, so it should only take a…
dmunger | December 8, 2006CogDaily readers are certainly opinionated about email sign-offs. Last week's Casual Friday study on the topic generated 343 responses, and our post on the study attracted 21 comments, some of them quite impassioned:
When someone signs an email "Cheers", I assume that they are either British or learned English in a British school. If I find out they are American, they get a check in the box marked "douchebag" in my personal catalog of people I know.
Wow! Who knew the stakes of an email sign-off were so high?
So, what is the best email sign-off? Well, according to our readers, the most…
dmunger | December 1, 2006A recent New York Times article suggests that signing off an email message with "Best" is an indication that a relationship is cooling down. Businessman Chad Troutwine claims that using "Best" to sign off is more like a brush-off:
Mr. Troutwine is not alone in thinking that an e-mail sender who writes "Best," then a name, is offering something close to a brush-off. He said he chooses his own business sign-offs in a descending order of cordiality, from "Warmest regards" to "All the best" to a curt "Sincerely."
There's naturally been a lot of casual conversation about this article online, so we…
dmunger | November 17, 2006There's been an abundance of PowerPoint advice in the science blogosphere lately. Based on my personal experience, I'd say Chad and Amy give some good advice -- and it's advice that probably serves them well in their own presentations.
But I was curious about something different. There are plenty of places where you can find tips about PowerPoint. The bigger question is, do these tips actually help poor speakers improve their presentations? In other words, can offering basic presentation advice without actually showing someone how to be a more engaging speaker help them give better…
dmunger | November 10, 2006Given all the interest in PowerPoint lately, we thought it might be a good time to devote a Casual Friday to PowerPoint. Specifically, can we learn more from much-maligned PowerPoint, or is good ol' text better?
We've designed a study that will present some information in PowerPoint form and some information in text form. Then we'll give you a short quiz on the results. If we get enough responses, we should have a definitive answer to the question of whether PowerPoint is a good way to disseminate information.
The whole thing should take just a few minutes of your time.
You'll need a couple…
dmunger | November 3, 2006Just about two weeks ago, I posted this visual illusion (if you haven't seen it yet, make sure to watch it with the sound turned ON):
How many flashes do you see?
In fact the dot only flashes once, but according to the study I report on in the post, the two beeps are supposed to throw you off. If you are like Shams et al's participants, you would most likely see two flashes, not one. In fact, just 23 percent of CogDaily readers reported seeing two flashes.
Much speculation ensued in the comments, but I had a couple ideas of my own, so last Friday I developed a quick study to test two…
dmunger | October 27, 2006On Monday, I posted a recently-discovered visual illusion with a quick poll to see how many of our readers could spot the illusion. As it turned out, not very many of them did. This was surprising to me, because the team that discovered the illusion, led by Ladan Shams, found that the illusion was very robust, experienced nearly all the time by most viewers. So why didn't our readers see it?
I've designed a quick study to test a couple of hypotheses. Normally we restrict Casual Fridays to just 5 questions, but this time I had to stretch the rules just a bit -- you'll have 11 quick questions.…
dmunger | October 20, 2006Last week's Casual Friday study was inspired by a recently-discovered illusion which showed that sound could influence what people percieve visually. I was planning to report on the study confirming that illusion yesterday, but my computer wasn't cooperating with me, and I couldn't generate a demo of the illusion. I think I've figured it out now, but now it's Casual Friday, so you'll have to wait until Monday to see it.
In the meantime, we've created our own study of visual illusion and sound. What we wanted to know is if sound could push a viewer over the threshold from not perceiving an…
dmunger | October 13, 2006Today's Casual Fridays study involves visual illusions. We're exploring when and how you see illusions. You'll need QuickTime and a computer with the volume turned up to participate. These illusions are great fun, and we're excited to see if there are any differences in how they are perceived. We really can't tell you much more without spoiling the results, so why not just try it?
Click here to participate.
As usual, the study is brief -- just 4 questions, which should only take a minute of your time. You have until 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, October 18 to participate -- or until…
dmunger | October 6, 2006Today's analysis of the Blogger SAT Challenge results is the one I've been looking forward to the most. After subjecting 109 people to a sample question from the SAT writing test, we've learned that bloggers are dumber than high school kids (though there's some reason to question that analysis). Our participants, most of them bloggers, didn't fare nearly as well as high schoolers.
But bloggers have all sorts of excuses to explain their poor results: They were multitasking at the time; they hadn't spent 18 months in an SAT prep course like the high schoolers; the judges don't "get" sarcasm.…
dmunger | October 5, 2006As of yesterday, readers had made an astonishing 3,878 individual ratings of the essays in the Blogger SAT Challenge. The average rating was 2.76, compared to 2.9 from the expert judges. Averaging the most popular rating for each essay comes up with an even lower number, 2.51. Anyone who thought that blog readers would judge bloggers more favorably than the experts was sorely mistaken.
Of the 109 entries, just 11 received a score of 5 or higher. Casual readers of the challenge were even stingier with their marks: Only 8 essays were ranked 5 or higher by a plurality of readers. Interestingly…
dmunger | October 3, 2006Remember yesterday when I said that only one essay scored a six on the Blogger SAT Challenge? I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I wrote it.
I think it's a pretty good essay, but it is a bit suspicious that the person who designed the study just happened to get the highest score (by the way, it wasn't a perfect score: the first grader gave me a 6 but the second grader gave me a 5). I can honestly say, however, that I didn't cheat. My plan was to write my essay as soon as I picked the question, so that I didn't have an advantage over people who saw it for the first time when they…
dmunger | October 2, 2006Two weeks ago, after reading the New York Times Article which judged the best high school writers harshly, Chad Orzel came up with an idea that was so good it just had to be tried:
Somebody ought to get a bunch of bloggers together, and give them the writing SAT under timed conditions, and see what they come up with.
I took Chad up on the challenge, and together we created the Blogger SAT Challenge, giving writers from across the blogosphere the chance to show that they can do better than high school students. How did they do?
Well, 500 people looked at the essay question, but just 109 were…
dmunger | September 29, 2006We are nearly finished grading the 109 entries for the Blogger SAT Challenge. Chad Orzel has designed a way for our readers to view and rate the essays themselves, but it's not quite ready yet. We're going to take the weekend to make everything perfect (well, nearly perfect), and then we'll unveil the rating system and the official, professionally graded results.
I think it will be worth the wait. Suffice it to say, this has been a larger undertaking than Chad and I could have imagined at the outset. We've had some amazing volunteer graders who went beyond the call of duty to make sure…
dmunger | September 22, 2006Musical complexity is bafflingly difficult to define. Is it just a lot of notes? Would a 100-note trill (the same two notes alternating over and over again) be more complex than 50 completely random notes? Most people would probably say "no." But what about the same trill versus just 3 random notes? Now maybe the trill gets the nod. A scale with a trill at the end is probably more complex than just the scale by itself. But what about "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with trills versus "Ode to Joy" without?
Researchers usually just take the easy way out and ask their listeners to rate each piece on a…
dmunger | September 21, 2006The data-collection phase of the SAT Challenge is complete. By any measure, this was the most successful Casual Friday ever. We maxed out the generous 500 responses I allotted for the challenge, the most ever responses to a Casual Friday study -- despite the fact that participants were warned the task would take up to 21 minutes.
The survey required participants to enter at least their name before moving on to answer the essay question. The most popular name was "asdf," but no one claiming the name asdf actually wrote an essay. Clearly plenty of participants only "participated" in order to…
dmunger | September 19, 2006There are just over 24 hours remaining in the Blogger SAT Challenge.
The challenge has gained substantial notice in the blogosphere, with dozens of blogs linking to it, including at least one top-20 blog. I expect that when we publish the results, there will be even more interest in it. So....
If you've been putting off participating, now is your chance. Be warned, however, that it truly is a challenge. Though we've now had nearly 400 people start the challenge by entering a name and clicking through to the essay question, at last count (back when there were just 259 survey views), only 78…
dmunger | September 15, 2006The New York Times recently published sample top-scoring essays from the new written component of the SAT test in order to show the type of work that was likely to score highly. Several bloggers, as well as the Times itself, have noted that the writing isn't exactly compelling.
In fact, I've been carrying on a bit of a debate with Chad Orzel, of ScienceBlogs' Uncertain Principles on this very subject. Chad argues that it's unfair to put a microscope to the the highschoolers' prose, written in just 25 minutes based on a prompt they had never encountered before.
In the comments, I expressed…