Gender: Who Remembers in Less Time?
By: Vaishnavi Danda and Prayusha Pandey
Question
Does Gender affect the number of times it takes recite one phone number back correctly out of 2 given phone numbers?
Hypothesis
If two phone numbers are given to both males and females and asked to recite the first back, then it would females less number of times to recite the first one back correctly.
Type of investigation
Comparative
Parts of Experiment
Independent variable: Gender type (Male, Female)
Dependent variable: number of times it takes to recite first phone number correctly out of two given phone numbers
Control: None
Experimental group(s): Gender (male and female)
Constant: The phone numbers
Analysis
Claim: In this experiment, comparing if gender has an effect on the number of times it took to memorize two given phone numbers and recite the first one back correctly, our data proved to show that gender does have an effect. The data that we collected testing both females and males, by giving them two phone numbers and asking them to recite the first one back, did not have high differences between the two, but males took less number of times.
Evidence: When trying to prove the hypothesis that women do indeed have better memory, 13 males and 13 females were tested. They were asked the same two phone numbers, and were told to repeat only the first one. Statistics showed that males went up to having up to six times repeated, and females had up nine times repeated. In the end the average for the repetitions of males was 4.5. The average repetitions of females was 5.9. This proving that males have better memory power than females.
Reasoning: Usually when you think of smarter and more memory, the first thing that comes to your mind is: female. Our minds learn as we get older, that males usually don't get work done on time, or get the best of grades. One reason for the hypothesis was this, females remember birthdays, anniversaries, so how hard is it to remember a phone number for them. Since males usually forget simple things like taking out the trash, people think they won't remember phone numbers, especially when given two. Through this experiment, statistics have shown, males have a better remembrance of phone numbers.
Conclusion
When comparing the number of times it took to recite the first phone number given correctly of two, between females and males, our data showed that males took less amount of time, as stated in our claim. Also stated in our claim, it shows that although the number of times between the two did not have a significant difference, we can still conclude that males did not take as many times as females. Therefore, in this experiment, our data can prove that our hypothesis is incorrect, as we stated, that females would take less number of times.
Sources of Inaccuracies/Error
Although our data was fair and equal to both gender, there were a few sources of errors and inaccuracies. When we chose the numbers, we made them up, using non-existent numbers. We tried to make them as hard as we could, which could have an effect on the memorization for the numbers. We think that if a number has a familiar area code to one gender, it could be easier to memorize. This would be a source of error in our experiment. We also think that since we did it on a variety of age group, we didn't focus on just one, so depending on the age, the data could have varied. Lastly, there could have been other outside factors that could have varied our data in our experiment. Factors, such as, their mood, what was going on in their life, and other things surrounding them.