Quiz Watch Data Analysis: How study trends change according to Quiz Bowl tournament frequency

Explanation

Figure 1

In figure 1, each data point represents a single day that falls in one of the selected months. The y-value of the data point is a reflection of the number of questions answered on the Quiz Watch app on that particular day. The x-value of the data point is the number of Quiz Bowl tournaments according to the hsquizbowl.org database occuring on that day, and the next n days. The value of n is controlled by the slider. To give an example, if n is 2, the x-value for the January 1 data point will be the number of Quiz Bowl tournaments occuring on January 1, January 2, and January 3.

Figure 2

Figure 2 demonstrates how strong the correllation for on Figure 1 for any given value of n. For some selections of months, the y-value actually becomes negative. On the visual representation of the graph, these negative values are changed to 0.

My Intentions and the Results

I created these graphs with the intention of finding out if Quiz-Bowl-ers significantly ramp up their studying in preparation for tournaments, or if they keep up a study routine that goes unaffected by the coming and going of tournaments. By including the slider, I also hoped to find out how far in advance Quiz-Bowl-ers started this study-rush, if it happened at all.

When I first put together the graph and examined it, I thought I had found that Quiz-Bowl-ers are most likely to study about 2 weeks in advance for tournaments. This is because when all months are selected, the strongest correlation occurs when n = 14 days; however, when playing around with month selections, Figure 2 fluctuates erratically, and any pattern you thought you might've noticed in the initial graph gets thrown into question. After seeing the inconsistencies in the data thus far, it appears that my findings for the research I originally intended to do are inconclusive. Perhaps the data will become more clear after more time, or perhaps none of this data is reflective of actual tendencies of Quiz-Bowl-ers and it's just reflective of the coincidental popularity of my app.

I still believe there's value in my data and findings to be made from it, however. For example, in general, it seems that months with more Quiz Bowl tournaments tend to have more Quiz Watch usage.

About

This web page was put together by Brandon Suen.