Nishanth Kalavakolanu

Are guys more likely to take risks than girls?

Hypothesis: Yes

Mr. Kiker Statistics period 3A

12/14/2016
 Weve all heard the stereotypes,males at LASA are seen to be adventurous, daring and

risking often times to a fault. Looking at movies, television, and video games it is not hard to see

examples of these male characters. Women on the other hand are often portrayed to be more

timid, calculated and cautious. Today many people see these stereotypes as harmful, and

hindering to social progress.

Regardless of all this social context, I came here to answer one question. Is this

stereotype rooted in any kind of truth? The ramifications of this can be important in different

aspects of society. Research has been done in the field already to quantify and explain if there is

a difference. In 2006 researchers in San Diego conducted an experiment with over 600

participants in order to study this phenomena. Asking questions about gambling, health,

recreation, and social situation the study found that women were substantially less likely to take

risks than men. This has big implications in realms such as public health. For example, men are

more likely to get killed in car accidents as they take risks by speeding and not wearing their

seatbelts. This is part of the reason that the life expectancy for men is less than women.

Hypothesis: Males at LASA are more likely to take risks than females
 The first step to testing this hypothesis is defining the risk that I am going to use in my

experiment. For simplicity's sake this is the scenario that I came up with. A person is given two

options.

Option 1: Receive one candy (Twix) from the experimenter (me)

Option 2: The experimenter will flip a coin. If the coin lands heads the participant will receive 2

candies; if the coin lands tails the participant will receive no candy.

If the participant chooses Option 1, then they will be deemed a non risk taker. If they choose

Option 2 then they will be deemed a risk taker.

The next step was finding an appropriate population to test this experiment on. For

convenience's sake I decided to chose the LASA senior class as my population, and take a 10%

sample. I decided to do this because collecting data from both other grades or outside of LASA

would be very difficult to do in the timeframe that was outlined. Also by only choosing one

grade, I can control for age in my experiment which otherwise could be a confounding variable.

After I determined a population, it is time to construct a sample. Since I am looking to males and

females it is only obvious that I block for gender. 10% of the population of LASA is around 24

people, and there are roughly the same number of males as females at LASA. So I will simple

random sample 12 senior males and 12 senior females.

Using the sample function in R I pulled 12 males and 12 females

After creating my blocked random sample I went about collecting data. Getting in contact

with all of my participants was a bit of a challenge as not everyone uses Facebook, and even if

they did people were sometimes unresponsive. However, by pacing the hallways in the morning
and lunch, combined with incessant messaging I eventually managed to conduct my experiment

on my participants. The results can be seen in Appendix A

Here is the Data Visualized in a Bar Graph

From these results it looks like there is a significant difference between senior males and

senior females at LASA in regard to risk taking. 9/12 or 75% of senior males at LASA were risk

takers, while 6/12 or 50% of senior females at LASA were risk takers. From this we can observe

that senior males at LASA are more likely to take risks than senior females at LASA.
 The experiment contained the three principles of experimental design: replication

randomization and control. It had replication because the experiment was repeated 24 times

among all the members of the sample. Randomization existed because the sample was randomly

chosen after blocking for gender. Lastly the experiment contained control as for the most part the

experiment was carried out in the same way. I told the participants of the two options and had

them pick one.

A confounding variables that could skew my data is time of day. Not all the experiments

were carried out at the same time, so if the time of day has an effect on risk taking it could also

confound my experiments results.

This quote from the San Diego Researchers offers an explanation.

There is another possible evolutionary explanation for gender differences in risk that might also

be worth considering, which we will term the offspring risk hypothesis. Perhaps women have a

tendency to see greater risks than men see, not because of different selection pressure relating to

mate seeking, but rather because if one perceives more risks in the world, one will be more

effective at keeping safe any offspring under ones care. Human infants are exceptionally

helpless for an unusually long developmental period, as compared to most animals.

 In conclusion it is very easy to say, given previous research and data combined with the

experiment that I ran, that males at LASA take more risks than females at LASA. This proves the

hypothesis correct. If I had more time and resources I would try to sample a better population,

maybe Austin as a whole or the entire United States. This would prove extremely difficult to pull

off but would yield more meaningful results as the ones I have can now only be applied to

LASA seniors.
 Works Cited:
Harris, Christine R., Michael Jenkins, and Dale Glaser. "Gender Differences in Risk Assessment:
Why Do Women Take Fewer Risks than Men?" Judgment and Decision Making 1.1
(2006): 48-63. Web.

Appendix A

Person RiskTaker
Henderson, Aidan Janette N
Jensen, Hannah Grace N
Hansen, Olivia Isabella Y
Wilson, Caitlyn Brooke Y
Girardeau, Anna Rose Y
Wang, Kristine L N
Wynn, Cameron Lauren Y
Eccles, Mara A N
Xia, Amanda Yuan Y
Lopez Rojas, Guadalupe N
Dawson, Casey Rose N
Dadoush, Karma Y

Harrington, Henry Lee Y

Sessa, Zachary Grady Y
Mueller-Oden, Luke Y
Yi, Michael Zou Y
MacAuley, Ethan Kekoaponoali'i Y
Linda, Remington Edwin Wells N
Davis, Collin Kane Y
Garza, Alec William Y
Takvorian, Aristotelis Bolte N
Serrins, Ezra Moss Kremer N
Atlas, Jacob Andrew Y
Hamilton Nathan Y