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ATHK1001 Assignment 1
Assignment Late penalties of 5% per day apply. • Online submission: All submissions are to be made online via the ATHK1001 Canvas website. Submissions will be checked for plagiarism. You may not use AI tools to assist you. • Word length: 750 words across all questions (except references in Question 13). Penalties will apply to papers that exceed this limit by more than 10%. • Total marks: 60 (15% of total grade for class) Background to Assignment 1 • A useful skill when dealing with data is being able to estimate plausible answers to questions you don’t know the answer to. • A strategy for doing this is embodied by what are known as “Fermi problems.” – A common example is “How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?” – Most people have no idea, but perhaps they can answer if we turn it into a Fermi problem. Fermi problems • Could breakdown “How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?” into a series of sub-question you may be better at estimating: – How many people are there in Chicago? How many families? What proportion of families have a piano? How often does a piano have to be tuned? How long does it take to tune a piano? How many days a year would a piano tuner work? • Ärlebäck & Albarracín (2019) reviewed evidence that Fermi problems are used in science education, but found no studies testing if they led to better estimates. • We tested this in the experiment you did in Week 2. Our experiment • You answered nine question setup as Fermi problems (i.e., with sub-questions) and nine as Non-Fermi problems. • Two sets of questions were used each with a Fermi problem version (i.e., target question with sub- questions) and a Non-Fermi version (i.e., target question with no sub-questions). – A “multiplicative” set of questions in which multiplying the sub-questions helps answer the target question (e.g., “How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?”) – An “additive” set of questions in which adding the sub- questions helps answer the target question (e.g., “What is the total military budgets of the members of the UN Security council (USA, Russia, China, UK, France), in millions of $US?”) Two groups • Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: – The “Multiplicative condition” in which participants’ Fermi problems came from the multiplicative set of questions, and their Non-Fermi problems came from the additive set of questions. – The “Additive condition” in which participants’ Fermi problems came from the additive set of questions, and their Non-Fermi problems came from the multiplicative set of questions. • So everyone answered both sets questions, had both Fermi and Non-Fermi problems, and the control group for each condition came from the other condition. • We also randomly varied the order of questions, but we did not analyse the effects of order. What a trial looked like Hypotheses • Hypothesis 1: Mean accuracy for Fermi problems will be different than for Non-Fermi problems. We predict accuracy will be greater for Fermi problems. • Hypothesis 2: Mean accuracy for Fermi problems will not differ between “Multiplicative condition” and the “Additive condition”. • Hypothesis 3: Mean accuracy for Non-Fermi problems will not be differ between “Multiplicative condition” and the “Additive condition”. • Hypothesis 4: Accuracy for Fermi problems will correlate with accuracy for Non-Fermi problems. • How we test such hypotheses will be covered in lectures in Week 4 and 5, and in Week 5 tutorials. Participants • A number of students who did the experiment are not part of the data set. – Some students did not have their data correctly recorded. – Some students did not complete enough of the experiment. – Some students did not consent to having their data included. • This left a data set of 197 ATHK1001 students. Results • Data file “Assignment1_dataset.xls” has been put on our Canvas website. Each line represents a participant. • First column “id number” is an arbitrary ID number generated by the computer. • The second “condition” column represent an independent variable – 1 indicates “Multiplicative condition” – 2 indicate “Additive condition”. • The column “Accuracy for Fermi problems” is the participant’s accuracy on their Fermi problem questions. • The column “Accuracy for Non-Fermi problems” is the participant’s accuracy on their Non-Fermi problem questions. How is accuracy calculated • How the two dependant variables are calculated is critical. • We do not expect Fermi problems to lead people to estimate the exact right answer, often the goal is just to estimate the answer to the right order of magnitude (power of 10). – E.g., any answer between 100 and 999 has an order of magnitude of 2. • For each students’ set of Fermi problems how many answer had the right order of magnitude was counted and divided by the number of Fermi problems they answered. – This is “Accuracy for Fermi problems” and is a proportion between 0.0 and 1.0. • For each students’ set of Non-Fermi problems how many answer had the right order of magnitude was counted and divided by the number of Non-Fermi problems they answered. – This is “Accuracy for Non-Fermi problems” and is a proportion between 0.0 and 1.0. Your task • Use Excel (or similar program) to analyse this data and determine if the hypotheses have been supported. • There are 13 questions to answer, each worth a specified number of marks. • Answer these questions with complete sentences (except where a graph is requested), but do not repeat the questions themselves. Don’t use tables. • Some questions ask you to give interpretations, just try to use your judgement and the tools you have been given in the course to answer as well as you can. – There are not necessarily single correct answers to such questions. Readings • You should read at Ärlebäck and Albarracín (2019) so as to understand what Fermi problems are and how they have been used. – This article can be found in the library but will be available on the “Reading list” accessible from ATHK1001’s Canvas page. • You do not need to read anything else on this topic in order to be able to write an excellent assignment. – You can read more widely if you wish. However, if you use words or ideas from something you read then you must properly cite it. Formatting recommendations • Our preference is that you use the font “Times New Roman”, 12-point size, and double-space all the lines. – Indent the beginning of each paragraph using one tab space. • You should use APA style referencing and citations, but we will accept other styles.