In lab, we learned about two by twos. A two by two is a graph with two axes. It is a tool that lets you see how two variables relate to each other. We did an exercise where we were given a bunch of pictures of cereal boxes and were assigned to make a two by two out of them. My group decided to plot healthiness of the boxes against the colors of the boxes. We found that sugar cereals tended to have bright reds whereas healthy cereals tended to have browner, earthier tones. Sugar cereals that want to portray themselves as healthy also have earthier colors. There were also a few exceptions to this.
When we tried to do a two by two for our STEM project, we first brainstormed some variables:
-perception of self confidence in technology
-when passion developed
-hands on versus not
-support from parents
-independence of decision
-teacher support
-care about money or career
-access to science capital
-profession of parents
-relationship with parents
We decided to do one two by two on when the passion for STEM developed versus support from parents. There were a few exceptions, but we found a strong correlation between parental support in STEM and developing an interest in STEM topics at a young age. This showed us two potential opportunity spaces: either get parents from non technical backgrounds more involved with their kids in STEM topics or provide support to kids from a young age in STEM topics without their parents.
We tried another two by two that plotted self confidence versus age of STEM interest. This one wasn't very helpful because there wasn't much variance along the confidence axis -- we interviewed a bunch of Stanford students, and pretty much everyone was self-confident. This did tell us, however, that confidence is important.
Our whiteboards:
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