Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My child studied the effects of drawing on focus. He conducted three trials on people who drew for thirty seconds, then had to find a four-leaf clover in a puzzle within a thirty-second time limit. He is comparing this to samples who did not draw first, but went straight into finding the clover within thirty seconds. Some from both groups never found the clover. Others found it in a matter of a few seconds. How does he label his variables in order to make a data table? How would he graph the results?

Hi,

Welcome to Science Buddies!

It sounds like your child has done an excellent job so far on a very fascinating project. The independent variable was having the test subjects draw or not draw and the dependent variable was how long it took to find the four leaf clover.

I recommend displaying the data a couple of different ways.

The first would be to take the average time for the drawing and non-drawing subjects and display this on a table and add a line for the number of people who did not ever find the four leaf clover. This data table could be displayed as a simple bar graph. The two bars with the number of individuals in the two groups will be on the x-axis and the average time will be on the y-axis.

Next, if there is enough data and if your child is willing, divide the data by gender or age group and graph the results again to see if there are any other trends in the data. If your child tested all 13-year old boys, this will not be possible

Here is the link for doing data analysis and graphs from this website.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ysis.shtml

Please let me know if you have any questions. Good luck!

Donna