Tetris and Phones Don't Mix
So, I asked you to help out my daughter in her science project and you did. You played Tetris. Then you played Tetris on the phone. Here are the results.
As you can see from the graph to the right, as you might expect, people, on average, do a lot worse when playing Tetris on the phone. Surprised? I didn't think so.
Now let's break it down a bit. We old folgies did worse overall than the young whipper snappers. What's with that? My generation teethed on Tetris! Do I have to carry all of you? Sheesh.
Still, an interesting note, the dropoff because of phone use was basically the same for both age groups.
But, in the battle of the sexes, women did much better overall in average score off the phone, but on the phone, men win! This was contrary to Emma's prediction which supposed that women are better at multitasking and therefore would do better on the phone than men.
Well, if you participated in the study, thanks. Emma had fun doing it.
Comments
Great research project, and interesting results, too! I'm sorry that I didn't see the call for participants until it was all over. Tetris is actually one of my least favorite games, but it would have been worth it...then again, I might have negatively skewed the results, especially for the old fogeys!
Posted by: Celia | December 23, 2008 3:05 PM
I'm curious about the statistical significance of these results, so can I ask what her total n was? How many participants fell into each group? I'm impressed with the analysis--good job, Emma!
Posted by: Jenn | December 23, 2008 3:10 PM
I'm curious about the statistical significance. Can I ask what her n was? How many participants are in each group? I'm very impressed--good job Emma!
Posted by: Jenn | December 23, 2008 3:18 PM
Good question! I know that the total number of participants was only 20, so take these results with a grain of salt, especially when it's broken down into categories.
I don't know what the break down was. I'll let her answer that.
Posted by: ironic1 | December 23, 2008 3:41 PM
I've never played Tetris before, so I ended up not participating, but I'm wondering....
I'm not a multi-tasker, myself. The best I can do is laundry + yelling "Hey, quit fighting!" And if I'm talking on the phone, I can't do something important, just rote tasks like laundry or dishes. But if women didn't do as well, is it because they were more interested in the conversation than they were in the game? For example, did they pick who they were going to talk to (a friend, a parent, etc.) or did they just talk to a telemarketer? Brett, on the other hand, is better at, say, playing video games and talking, because, like many husbands, he filters me out quite well. Maybe guys are more used to letting the conversation go on while they do something they find more interesting, like, oh....Tetris. Plus, they might be more interested in posting a high result, and have slightly better eye-hand coordination.
Just some thoughts. (Brett agreed with me about the conversation).
Posted by: Leah | December 23, 2008 6:07 PM
I meant to participate, I really did! But the day I finally sat down to actually do it I saw that her deadline had already passed. I'm glad she still had 20 participants. Interesting study.
Posted by: Carl | December 24, 2008 10:26 AM