Project Hypothesis Testing by Dan Racic and Andrew Mackin

We’ve all observed our Math 5 professors and thought to ourselves “Wow! These are some attractive guys!” Well, ok. But we wondered: What does the average undergraduate female at Dartmouth think about our very own professors?

Also, we wanted to pick something that everyone, especially our Math professors, would actually be INTERESTED IN!!!! VS.

However, our primary GOAL was to determine, once and for all, the most attractive Math 5 professor! This information could then be used in whatever way Professors Leibon and Rudel see fit (i.e. picking up chicks) It was a difficult decision, but we decided that Professor Rudel’s recent haircut would give him the edge in this contest. Our Power Hypothesis was that P=70%

We decided to test an equal number of females from each class, aiming for a total of thirty or more. We wanted to use a variety of methods to select these subjects: We randomly selected a number of people from each facebook and blitzed them. We interviewed random people whom we stopped in Collis and Thayer. We went door-to-door to ten different dorms

We looked up people in the freshman year Green Books from the last four years, and we also asked random people. This is the blitz we sent out: Subject: *Important* PLEASE READ! hi! you have been selected at random as one of 12 candidates in your class for a special survey. me and my partner are doing a survey for math class and we need your help. all you have to do is look at two sets of pictures and then answer three easy questions. easy? easy. the only requirement is that you do not know personally professors rudel or leibon from the math department, or myself or my partner. if you do know them or are off this term or cant do the survey, please let us know as soon as you can. if you can do it, we have received funding to give you a little something for helping us out. and we have chocolate for you. and we will come find you wherever you want us to and administer this easy, less than 2 minute survey. blitz back with where you will be (dorm room is probably easiest) asap if you can do it. thanks, and hope to see you, mackin dan racic

Of course, we didn’t actually give them any candy or prizes because we are cheap. Our survey was put onto a PowerPoint, and we met with a total of 36 people (we talked to 38, but 2 declined). We took special care to get an equal division of years, and avoid sampling errors by running the test the same exact way each time. This was the PowerPoint we showed to every subject….

Thank you for participating in this short survey. You will be shown two series of photographs of two different adult males in various poses. The two series will be separated by a brief ‘visual palate cleanser.’ You will have a short time to view each picture and you may not return to any picture. At the end, you will be asked a few short questions. Please answer to the best of your abilities.

Ready? Here’s Series One….

Ok, that was Series One. Time for a brief break, Prepare for a palate cleanser…

Now on to Series Two! Ready…

Ok, all done with the pictures. Take a moment to think about what you’ve seen. Only a few more questions…..

Can you tell the difference between these two men? Have you ever seen either of these men in person, or do you know who they are?

Assuming that you do have a preference for the looks of one of the males versus the other, did you prefer the person in the first series of photographs, or the man in the second?

Thank you very much for your time and help. Please let us know if you had any problems with this survey (i.e. understanding the questions, technical errors, etc)

Every person watched that same slide show, and when we tallied the results...

We were shocked! Both professors were almost equally attractive. Or at least they were both chosen the same number of times. We had been expecting to get something like this:

Instead, our actual results looked like this: We were forced to accept our Null Hypothesis - there was less that 1% chance our Power Hypothesis had been correct!

After we discovered that people seemed to like them evenly (Null Hypothesis), we thought perhaps we could look at class years to draw some interesting conclusions…

Disappointingly, they were almost equally preferred along class lines as well.

So there you have it. Here are some confounding factors: Though we told them the same things as far as poses, their poses were different. The backgrounds for the photos were different. We had a hard time finding on campus- housed ‘04’s. So, We may have gotten a really weird sampling batch of them. We gathered data on and around Winter Carnival Weekend, and we know for certain that AT LEAST 5-10% of subjects had been drinking, and possibly many more had been that we did not detect.

Despite these possible sources of error, we feel our test was accurate. Thank you for your time. We leave with some quotes From test subjects…

“Well, I guess he [Leibon] has a nice smile” - ‘06 “The second one because he looked friendlier” - ‘05 “Can I choose the duck?” - a lot of people “He’s such a tragic figure, it’s like he’s [Rudell] looking into my soul” - drunk ‘07 “I have always been intimated by dark haired men” -’05 Quotes

Quack!