| Gaming and Entertainment View the Forum Registry XML Get RSS Feed for this thread | Self-edit this thread |
|
| 0 |
Subject: Sample Studies Posted by: Great One - [201155199] Fri, Nov 02, 2007, 21:00 There are a lot of random things I think about during the course of a day... for example on the drive in to work, I wonder what the most common time is for accidents to occur. Is it during rush hour, early morning or late night? winter or summer? going to or from work? How about some bathroom stats? in a public restroom, what is the most commonly used stahl? do people go all the way to the last one? do they use the first one cause they are lazy and don't want the extra walk? How about shopping? most common times to be at a grocery store? weekends? weeknights right after business hours? How about fantasy sports? how much time does the average person spend on their teams every day? or watching boxscores (nights per week?). Don't know why I think about these things, but I do. Perhaps its the obsession with numbers and stats (created by the monster that is fantasy sports!). Is there a website that does studies on these types of random things? | |||||||
| 1 | Great One ID: 201155199 Sat, Nov 03, 2007, 10:05 |
Daylight savings equals increase in pedestrian deaths This is the kind of random study that makes me curious... | ||||||
| 2 | Khahan ID: 486552412 Sat, Nov 03, 2007, 10:23 | Dude, lay off the pot. ;) | ||||||
| 3 | Great One Sustainer ID: 053272014 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 09:23 |
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - The windy city is also the most wired, according to a survey that showed people in Chicago are the most caffeinated in the United States. Chicagoans eat more chocolate and drink more cola than other U.S. urbanites, and are among the top consumers of energy drinks and coffee. They are also likely to say caffeine is good for you, according to the poll conducted by Prince Market Research. Tampa, Miami, Phoenix and Atlanta rounded out the top five most caffeinated cities, while residents of San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, Detroit and Baltimore consumed the least caffeine. "It's surprising perhaps that some places you may think have a lot of hustle and bustle like San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York, were the least caffeinated cities," said Todd Smith, a spokesman for HealthSaver, a healthcare discount service that commissioned the poll. The survey looked at consumption of coffee, tea, chocolate, sodas, energy drinks and caffeine pills in 20 major cities in the United States by interviewing 2,000 people. Seattle took the top spot in just caffeinated coffee consumption. Nearly 60 percent of residents in the city said coffee would be the most difficult caffeine product to give up. The growing popularity of "high-end" coffees, energy drinks and green tea has added to more caffeine consumption around the world, according to HealthSaver. Half of all the people questioned in the poll said they drank coffee every day, followed by 21 percent who drank caffeinated cola. New Yorkers and San Franciscans were also among people most likely to say caffeine is bad for you. More than 70 percent of people questioned in the poll said they were not addicted to caffeine. The older the age group the more likely they were to say coffee would be the most difficult caffeinated product to give up. | ||||||
| 4 | walk ID: 7952415 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 10:37 | There's A LOT of reseach in the social psychology literature about many of the seemingly random mundane things to which you inquire, Great One. Being a psychologist, I had to read a lot of these in grad and undergrad courses. The scientific study of how humans interact with other humans -- that is social-psych. You might want to grab a text or check out some of the journals. You'll be a little bored cos it gets technical with how they do their research (pretty rigorous), but this is where you'd find some of this stuff. Or, for some simple examples, check out "psychology today," which is like a magazine of pop psych (not rigorous). | ||||||
| 5 | Great One Sustainer ID: 053272014 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 11:04 |
sweet - thanks Walk My fiance is working on her masters and has one of these stats/psych courses. Not very fun. | ||||||
| 6 | Alex ID: 8718115 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 11:33 |
1 - Cool. I finally have an opening to vent to someone about that daylight savings study. Perfectly good study from what I can tell, but here's a quote that shows that the guy who did the study totally misunderstood his results: "Fischbeck, who regularly walks with his 4-year-old twins around 6 p.m., is worried enough that he'll be more cautious starting Monday. 'A three times increase in the risk is really dramatic, and because of that we're carrying a flashlight,' he said." I wonder if he takes extra precautions when he walks 6 blocks instead of 2 blocks, which would also increase his risk by three times? | ||||||
| 7 | weykool@work ID: 2842717 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 13:00 |
I wonder if he takes extra precautions when he walks 6 blocks instead of 2 blocks, which would also increase his risk by three times? Most pedestian deaths occur within two blocks from where a person lives. Adding 4 blocks to a normal two block walk only increases the risk by 50%. | ||||||
| 8 | weykool@work ID: 2842717 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 13:04 |
Studies also show that 50% of auto deaths occur within 10 miles from where a person lives. Moving more than 10 miles from your current home could reduce your risk of auto death by 50%. Of course if you have a beach front home your risk of drowning increases by 500% if you move in the wrong direction. | ||||||
| 9 | Great One Sustainer ID: 053272014 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 13:26 |
I'm loving it! this is the kind of stuff I was wondering about... lol... Weykool - is that high number because a lot of people die of heart attack, natural causes etc in their own home? or are we talking i.e. a traffic accident a block away? I guess if its all encompassing - then I could see why so many people die from home (and it would be most common). If not, then thats pretty crazy. | ||||||
| 10 | Khahan ID: 43104629 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 14:00 |
Somewhat related, I did similar study in college for a non-verbal communications course. I looked at what non-verbal signals people gave when walking at night compared to the day. (communications major w/ criminal justice minor, go figure). At this point I have no idea what the numbers were, but I know I found that people tend to give much more 'leave me alone' non-verbals while its dark. Chin tucked, hands rolled into fists or in pockets, body posture generally leaning forward. Many of these are actually listed as aggressive tendencies. They'd occur whether people were walking alone or in small groups (2-3 people), but most of them diminished greatly in moderate (4-6) and almost disappeared altogether in large groups of people (7+). I also read where the government has just finished a $250mil study where they came to the conclusion that 1 out of every 1 person alive today will eventually die. | ||||||
| 11 | Great One Sustainer ID: 053272014 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 14:04 |
Both of those are awesome results Khahan! Anything to do with weather at all? like maybe its colder at night so your hands would be in your pockets? though I guess the weather would be the control and the amount of people was the variable. | ||||||
| 12 | Great One Sustainer ID: 053272014 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 14:08 |
As far as the daylight study and the accidents - i guess thats what lead me to wonder when most traffic accidents occur? at night? rush hour? is there a little blip right after happy hour? lol... It would seem to me that if there is an equal number of accidents late at night then during the day, that it would actually be a proportionally greater amount of accidents, since less people are driving at night - and therefore more dangerous to drive at night. If 10 people are driving at night and there is 1 accident vs. if there a 100 people driving during the day and there was also 1 accident. | ||||||
| 13 | Rendle ID: 449391213 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 14:08 | Correlation does not equal causation. There is a correlation between people eating ice cream and drowning. People usually eat ice cream when it's warm outside and people also swim when it's warm. My Psych major college roommate told me that. | ||||||
| 14 | Khahan ID: 43104629 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 14:08 | The weather did present a problem because it was in February and I live in the NE. Again, I forget exact numbers. But weather was taken into account in my findings, as was gender, lighting and street population (basically was this a busy walking area or an isolated block). | ||||||
| 15 | C1-NRB ID: 17348117 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 14:53 |
Did you take into account there was some guy lurking in the shadows watching people and taking notes on their movements and behaviors? I kid, I kid... | ||||||
| 16 | biliruben ID: 579411512 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 15:02 |
If you have access to a University online library, there is something called LexisNexis, which has a statistical database which will answer many of you questions. For instance, in 2004, the most accidents happened during the 3 hour period between 3-6pm (16.3%), followed by the period between 6-9pm (15.7%). Saturday was the most frequent day of the week (18.4%) Let's see if I an link the doc (I doubt it): | ||||||
| 17 | biliruben ID: 579411512 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 15:03 | Can you see it? | ||||||
| 18 | biliruben ID: 579411512 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 15:05 |
I did a bathroom study, btw. But it was about handwashing. Crazy psych students to study which urinal and stall are used most, and whether it depends on which is currently used. USEFUL! ;) | ||||||
| 19 | Great One Sustainer ID: 053272014 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 15:42 |
Did you take into account there was some guy lurking in the shadows watching people and taking notes on their movements and behaviors? Classic! Which urinal/stall? I thought of this one day at a movie theater that had a not so clean bathroom. So that got me thinking - which of these is the cleanest for me to use? The first one because people are lazy and always just go the first available? or do they go to the furthest one away? Those seemed like the most reasonable explanations (my example had 3 urinals). Using that theory, it would seem to me that the middle would be the least used, right? because either you are going to the first or last one - and then if a second person comes in, they always give you the one urinal buffer, right? and hardly anyone would start off with the middle because they don't want the risk of someone flanking them. If one were to investigate, I guess the simplest way would be to track how many times each is flushed. | ||||||
| 20 | Great One Sustainer ID: 053272014 Wed, Nov 07, 2007, 15:46 |
Great stats biliruben - though we can't see what you tried to post. Interesting that Saturday has the most accidents. Now I want to brainstorm why. people driving to places they are unaccustomed on road trips? are they more likely to be out drinking? And that handwashing one was disturbing... the one I saw was done at baseball games - and a large percentage, especially men, just walked right out. Not even a token little water on the hands. | ||||||
| ||||||||
Post a reply to this message: (But first, how about checking out this sponsor?) | ||||||||