The Results Are In!

Thank you to everyone who helped us with the mistakes survey!  (To read more about the project, click here, here and here.)  We hope you enjoy our reports (which were dictated to our friend Beth).

INTRODUCTION & METHODS

From Zach: We wanted to learn about what mistakes people made and how they react.  We were reading about mistakes with Wendy, and we found out that she wanted to do a survey about mistakes.  We first got an email account.  We thought up the questions and then we sent out the questions in an email.  We got the information online from people who wrote back to the survey.  Our goal was to get 100 responses.  We said online that we had to have them back by May 23rd.  We got them actually a little later than May 23rd, and also we got 100 responses.

From Ezra: This survey is about mistakes.  Our mom made us do the survey.  With our mom’s friend Wendy we were doing this stuff about mistakes and part of the project was doing the survey.  It’s where you ask people questions so that you can know things if people do the thing you’re asking questions about.  So it took my mom a long time giving us email accounts. We checked the email every day until our deadline.  We were asking 100 people and then we got 100 responses before our deadline.

RESULTS

From Zach: After we got the responses we made these charts here, and soon we’re going to be sending them out.  In the first chart, we asked, #1 “Have you ever had a day without a mistake?”  On that, 90% said “No” and 10% said “Yes.”  On #2, “Do you make a lot of mistakes each day?,” 58% said “Yes” and 42% said “No.”  #3, “Do you ever overreact?,” 93% said “Yes” and 7% said “No.  #4 “Do you ever ask for help?,” it was also 93% said “Yes” and 7% said “No” again.

From Zach: This is a different chart.  It’s called “Feelings People Have When They Make Mistakes.”  On the survey there were options of: ashamed, frustrated, relieved, guilty, sad, mad at myself, embarrassed, stupid, angry, and afraid.  The most common of them were frustrated (n=96), mad at myself (n=88), and embarrassed (n=89).  The least common are relieved (n=9), angry (n=35), and afraid (n=34).  In the middle ones are ashamed (n=66), guilty (n=64), sad (n=57), and stupid (n=61).

From Ezra: This chart shows which feelings people have when they make a mistake.  Only four people out of 100 didn’t say frustrated!  Ninety-six out of 100 said “Yes.”  When we were doing “relieved” we meant that people were relieved that it wasn’t worse, but we on accident didn’t do that, and that’s why there were only nine people who said “Yes” that they were relieved.  Our friend Wendy knew we meant relieved that it wasn’t worse; she was the first person who said she was relieved.

DISCUSSION

From Zach: It was actually quite fun to do the survey because I liked doing all the writing and the typing and the sending and everything like that.  What surprised me was I thought a lot of people were going to say that they had a bunch of days without a mistake, but actually not very many said yes at all.

From Ezra: The project was fun.  Most people make mistakes more often.  I never knew that people made mistakes mainly every day.  Maybe I’ve never made none days without a mistake, but I never noticed them.  Maybe I’m making a mistake right now!

Hey, are you writing all of this down for the internet?