Are boys or girls better at differentiating flavours? Dirichlet's Army By Ananya Williams, Anna Bullard and Divya Jean Rossmoyne Senior High School Junior Division Year 8

Introduction Question: Are boys or girls better at differentiating flavours? Aim: To find out which gender correctly guesses what flavour jellybean they are eating the most. Hypothesis: Girls are better at differentiating flavours than boys.

Method We found a sample of 40 boys and 40 girls to participate in our experiment. Each person was blindfolded and given a jellybean at random. They were told that they could be holding one of nine different flavours: aniseed, blueberry, apple, raspberry, apricot, strawberry, vanilla, orange or grape. These are the flavours in a standard packet of Allens jellybeans. Each person ate the jellybean they were given, and made a guess as to which of those nine flavours they thought they were eating.

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Conclusion Based on the data we have collected, our group concludes that boys are better at differentiating flavours than girls. 47.5%(19/40) boys guessed the flavour of their jellybean correctly, whereas only 32.5% (13/40) girls guessed correctly. That is a difference of 6 people. That is a ratio of correct boys:correct girls of 19:13. These results refute our earlier hypothesis, which was that girls are better at differentiating favours than boys.

Evaluation Although our group conducted our experiment to the best of our ability, in order to ensure valid and reliable results, we recognise that there will inevitably be errors in our experiment. Firstly, we did not record the names of those we tested, and so there was the possibility for a person to be tested twice. We did not survey people in isolation, and so there is also the possibility of one student giving hints to another, as to which flavour they are eating. If we were to conduct the experiment again, we would make sure that we control these variables.

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