4.26.2010

Formal Conclusions

I posted my results and conclusions. Here is my experiment from beginning to end.

Relative Ability Pottery Experiment

Question

How does the time of day affect my throwing ability? Do I throw better on day that I do teach and if so, before or after I teacher, or do I throw better on days that I do not teach? Is there in relationship between my self-evaluations and that of my audience?

Hypothesis

I predict that I will throw better on days that I do not teach. I also predict that there will be a positive correlation between my self-evaluations and the audience ratings.

Controlled Variables

1 pound of clay per vessel

45-minute increment periods

glaze color

Independent Variable

Day and Time of day

Dependent Variable

Skill Level

Experiment

I plan to throw pottery at three different times of days: when I teach (before and after) and when I do not teach. Before each 45-minute session, I will fill out a self-evaluation form. Each session, I will rate each piece I throw on a scale from 1-10. At a later date, I will host a rating performance in which I will ask an audience to rate my pieces on a scale from 1-10 as well. I will then compare the average audience rating to my own self-evaluations. Throughout the process, I will maintain a Relative Ability Pottery blog (www.relativeabilitypottery.blogspot.com). As the experiment proceeds, I will add more information to the blog such as photos, self-evaluations, and eventually the experiment results.

Materials

Medium-bodied porcelain clay

Wheel

Clay tools

Water

Mid-range glaze

Kiln

Location from rating show

Paper ballots for ranking

Internet accessibility

Blog

Photography equipment

Preparations

Self-Evaluation Form

How many hours of sleep did I get last night?

0-3
3-5
5-7
7-9
9-11

On a scale from 1-10, how stressed am I feeling today?

On a scale from 1-10, how happy do I feel today?

On a scale from 1-10, how satisfied with life do I feel today?

The color that best describes my mood today is:

Physical Health

The music I am listening to as I throw is:

Ranking while throwing

Pottery#a: ranking
Pottery#b: ranking
c. Etc.

Observations

The most prominent observation I have made throughout the experiment is my lack of motivation during days that I do teach. If I throw before I teach, I am too anxious. If I throw after I teach, after school, I am usually exhausted. I have more motivation to throw pottery on days that I do not teach. However, so far, I am noticing little variance in skill level.

Glaze color: I do not feel like I can glaze my vessels with a clear glaze. I do not believe that the clear glaze will enhance the project in anyway. I do believe that I must keep my glaze consistent. On every self-evaluation I asked myself what color I would be. Overwhelming I picked greys and blues, therefore, I have decided to glaze accordingly. I will use a medium range floating blue glaze.

Rating Performance: While considering the amount of vessel I have and am asking my audience to rate, I fear that many people would be overwhelmed to rate all 50 or so pieces. At the rating performance, with the advice of Frank Martin, I will split the pottery into groups of ten and change out the pottery to be rated throughout the night. The pottery groups will be chosen in a random order.

During the rating show at the Emporium on First Friday April 2, 2010, I noticed that there were predominantly two types of people that observed my pottery. Some of my audience clearly did not want to take their time to evaluate even 8-10 pieces. Many were interested in looking but not participating. Others though were very excited about participating in art. Many said things such as, “This is neat! You actually want to hear what I have to say.” “I like interactive art.” The rating was completely voluntary.

Data

See excel file for more accurate data

Graphs

See previous post.

Analysis

Overall there will a positive correlation between my self-evaluations and the audience ratings. The range of variance is between –3.00 and +3.83. On average, there was less than 1-point variance between the self-evaluations and the audience ratings. The –3.00 almost seems like an outlier. More frequently than not, I rate between 0.01 and 1 points lower than the audience.

Conclusion

The ratings are not consistent with day. So therefore I conclude that my ability does not fluctuate between days but based on my self-evaluations (stress level, happiness, satisfaction) my motivation to produce art varies between the days. Also, my own self-perception is quite consistent with audience opinion, which is reassuring. Looking at the individual forms, I did notice that some ratings were quite low while others are much higher for the same pieces. I wonder how objective verses subjective some of the participants rated. Also, this was conducted in an art gallery during the First Friday festivities of April. The audience usually consists of artists and non-artists. I wonder if occupation and prior knowledge of ceramics has anything to do with the ratings.

4.25.2010

Results

Here are the results of the rating. I compared the variance between my self-evaluations and the average rating from the show on the First Friday of May. Surprisingly, the majority of the ratings and self-evaluation were close in range with little variance. On more occasions, I rated lower than the average rating, however, in a few cases, I did rate higher. There was not a consistent time of day or day in general that this occurred.

Overall, my ratings were higher on days that I did not teach but there is so little evidence in ratings to suggest this is a better time to work for me. Although my ability did not seem to fluctuate drastically between days, I did find that I was increasingly frustrated and unmotivated to throw after days that I taught. I often was tired. Also, I found that on days I would throw before I taught, I was anxious and eager to prepare for my work day. As far as motivation and relaxations, days off from work are the best day for me to throw on the wheel.

Here are some small images of my file. You can see a larger readable version here.

Relative Ability Pottery Results