Experiment
The Steps
- Take two equal groups of people, sixth and seventh graders, twelve people in each group. Ask people to rate their current level of happiness, from 1-10. Write down the numbers for each group, and take the averages.
- Then, walk both groups at different times to the gym. Give group 1 a food (we will decide on this), and let them eat it. Then let them play capture the flag for ten minutes.
- For group 2, don’t give them a food. Instead, give them ten minutes to play capture the flag
- At the end of the ten minutes, collect each person’s new number, and get an average from each group. First, see how much the average grew in numbers from each group.
- Then, average the two numbers, and get a new average, for each group. The group with the higher over average of ratings is the “happier” group, because the people in this group are happier.
- If there is a significant improvement between the averages in group 1, food may make a difference in happiness. If there isn’t, it may not matter. If the averages grow significantly in group 2, we can conclude that spending time in the park made people happier.
QuestionDoes eating food make people significantly happier?
|
HypothesisWe think that food makes others happy increasing the levels of serotonin.
|
ResultsFair warning: these results do not prove or disprove our hypothesis. There is no true way to prove or disprove our experiment, since humans are different and have different preferences. Our experiment was rushed and the groups were subsequently not equal, so there are too many variables in this experiment to distinguish clear results. Please remember this while reading our results, and do not take them as a correct assessment on happiness, people, and food.
For group one (the group that was given food), they started out as 6.3 average. and then they ended as 7.9. As for group two they started out as a 5 average and then ended as a 7.7. In the end we figured out that people are happier when they have food. |