Burrell students present projects, research at statistics symposium

Burrell High School senior Seth Trisoline is a caffeine drinker.

So when the opportunity arose in Meaghan Volek’s statistics class to research a topic and present the findings at the school’s first statistics symposium, Trisoline and classmate Xander Obbink decided to study whether caffeine makes someone’s handwriting worse.

They directed participating students to write three predetermined sentences and a sentence about how their day was going. Participants then were given a small portion of a Red Bull energy drink and were instructed to write the same sentences again as Trisoline and Obbink examined and analyzed them for any “errors” — defined by crammed words or letters, unrecognizable or sloppy letters or misspellings.

But, contrary to their hypothesis, the pair found they did not have enough evidence to support their expectation that caffeine significantly increases the amount of errors in students’ handwriting.

Trisoline, Obbink and 13 of their peers presented their own research projects this week as part of the school’s statistics symposium. Volek said school officials floated the idea of a statistics symposium in 2019, but the idea didn’t come to fruition until this year. The symposium featured the work of current Burrell students but also some alumni who took statistics.

“It’s a nice little event to see students I haven’t seen in a while come back, and that’s very rewarding to see as an educator,” Volek said.

Volek said students completed their research projects and presented their findings on a research poster board, to prepare them for college. Symposium guests could view the gallery of different projects at the school’s senior courtyard. Brittany Bell, from the creative technology and experience design agency Deeplocal, provided a keynote address. Attendees were invited to visit “breakout sessions” with guest speakers Kait Konopka, a board certified behavior analyst; John Milligan, an organic chemistry professor at Thomas Jefferson University; Austin Rock, a human resources manager at Acutec Precision Aerospace; and Shannon Rock, a project manager at Microsoft.

Having the guest speakers gave students the ability to learn more about professions involving statistics, Volek said.

Ali Hughes and Maddie Gerthoffer, both seniors at Burrell, studied whether eating breakfast affected test scores. Gerthoffer said they were interested in the topic because, throughout their academic careers, students were always told to eat breakfast before big exams.

In their experiment, participants came into school at 7:30 a.m. without eating breakfast and completed a test. After the test, participants got a pack of Pop-Tarts to take home and eat before coming to school the next day. The following morning, participants took a very similar test, also at 7:30 a.m.

“The test was very well-rounded,” Hughes said. “We did not favor one subject over another.”

They found there was not enough evidence to support their claim that eating breakfast has an affect on test scores, but Gerthoffer acknowledged that, due to a small number of participants, there may have been room for error.

Regardless, both spoke positively of the symposium experience.

“I learned new ways to present (research),” Gerthoffer said.