Driven To Distraction

Question: I wonder if the reaction times’ of students whilst reading a text tend
to be slower than the reaction times of students who aren’t reading a text at
Te Horo Highschool in 2017?

Reaction times of Students Reading Texts compared to Not Reading Texts at

Te Horo Highschool in 2017.

Analysis:

I notice that the middle 50% of reaction times for texting students ranges from
380.5ms to 557ms. This compares to the middle 50% of non-texting students
reaction times that range from 226.5ms to 300.5ms. The middle 50% of reaction
times of texting students in the sample are much higher (slower) than non-
texting students. This makes me start to think that there is a clear difference
between the 2 groups. i.e. that texting students tend to have slower reaction
times than non-texting students at Te Horo Highschool in 2017.

I notice that there is no overlap between the middle 50%’s of each group’s
reaction times in the sample. This indicates a clear difference between the 2
groups’ reaction times and makes me think that the same difference will be
present in the population.
I notice that the spread of the middle 50% of reaction times for texting students
in the sample is 176.5ms (from LQ to UQ). This compares to the spread of the
middle 50% of reaction times for non-texting students of 74ms. This indicates
that the texting students have a greater variation in their reaction times and the
non-texting students’ reaction times are more similar to each other.

I notice that the shape of the non-texting students’ reaction times has 2 peaks.
One large group of students have reaction times around 210 to 240ms and
there is another significant group around 280 to 310ms. The differences
between these two groups of non-texting students might be due to another
factor that might affect reaction times like the time of day they were tested or
how tired the student was. The shape of the texting students’ reaction times is
fairly evenly spread although there does appear to be less students around 475
to 540ms reaction time. There is a significant group that has reaction times
around 550 to 600ms and another group that has a wide variety times spread
out from 280 to 470ms. I wonder if increasing the sample size would fill in some
of these gaps or if the population has the same characteristics as this sample.

I notice that the entire box and whisker graph for reaction times of students’
reading texts has shifted further to the right (up the scale) compared to
students who did not read a text. All 5 values for texting students are higher
than non-texting students which makes me start to think that back in the
population of all students at Te Horo Highschool in 2017, those who read texts
do tend to have slower reaction times than those that don’t.

It is interesting to note that 50% of students who didn’t read a text had reaction
times that were faster than all of the reaction times for students in the sample
who read a text.
In conclusion, I can make the claim that, back in the population of students at Te
Horo Highschool in 2017, the reaction times of students who read texts do tend
to be slower than the reaction times of those students who don’t read texts. I
can confidently make this claim because there is no overlap between the middle
50%’s of my 2 samples. This is a significant enough difference for me to be
confident that these differences would also be present in the population even
though this is just one sample. Other samples would most likely produce
different statistics and graphs but I would still expect to get the same message
that reaction times of texting student tend to be slower. Not only is there no
overlap of the boxes, but there is a clear shift up the scale of reaction times for
students who read texts and the bulk of reaction times for students who don’t
read texts are quicker than the fastest reaction times of students who do read
texts.
This conclusion makes sense to me because a person’s reaction time would be
closely linked to their ability to concentrate on something. If a person was being
distracted by something like reading a text, then it is reasonable to think that
they wouldn’t be able to react as fast as if they were just concentrating on the
reaction experiment. Their focus would be divided between the 2 tasks.
I wonder if there may have been some other factors that may have influenced
the students’ reaction times that haven’t been accounted for. I could investigate
whether being tired affected the reaction times or not. I could also investigate if
conducting the experiment at different times of the day results in different
reaction times.