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Mini Project 2: Classmate Survey

Table of Contents

Introduction #

The purpose of this project is to gather our cluster mates’ opinions on the COSMOS program so far.

Data #

We collected data through a Google Form. The questions are as follows:

  • Do you like the food in the Dining Hall? (rate from 1 to 5)
  • Rate the number “7” from 1-10.
  • When do you wake up?
  • Do you like your roommate? (rate from 1 to 5)
  • Would you steal Joshua’s Macbook?
  • Is Jordan your name?

The last two questions were required.

We received 20 responses out of 19 cluster mates, which means one person submitted twice.

Methodology #

The responses we received were relatively uniform because we restricted the formats of the answers in the Google Form, but they still required some cleaning. First, we imputed the average rating for missing dining hall food ratings. We also parsed wake up times to datetime format and got rid of unreasonable times (e.g. 3 am). Finally, we changed the last two questions’ categorical answers to boolean format.

After data cleaning, we were left with 9 entries. This result means that less than half of our cluster mates were taking this survey seriously, with the rest of them submitting joking responses.

Discussion #

We discovered the following:

  1. The average rating of the dining hall food was 3.7 out of 5, with the lowest rating being a 3. This suggests that most COSMOS students in Cluster 11 enjoy the food at UC Davis. However, no one rated the food a 5, so there is still some room for improvement.
  2. People have varied opinions on the number 7.
  3. In terms of wake-up time, we saw two peaks at 6:45 and 7:30, corresponding to the early and late risers, respectively.
  4. People overwhelmingly approved of their roommate, with over half of the ratings being a 5.
  5. Whether or not to steal Joshua’s Macbook polarized our cluster mates, with an practically even split both ways. However, those who did want to steal Joshua’s Macbook were very enthusiastic about it, with an overwhelming majority answering “very yes” rather than just “yes”.
  6. 3 students reported that their name was Jordan, which is 1/3 of our cluster. These results are surprising, considering that only 1 person in our cluster is actually named Jordan.

We also looked for correlations between reponses to different questions by creating a heatmap showing linear correlation coefficients for all possible pairs of questions. We discovered the following:

  1. People who rated their roommate higher tended to not want to steal Joshua’s Macbook. Perhaps some cluster mates were projecting their feelings about their roommates on Joshua. Alternatively, those who like their roommate more might be more kind-hearted and not want to inflict suffering on Joshua by stealing his Macbook. Both theories require further investigation.
  2. People named Jordan were less likely to steal Joshua’s Macbook.