Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

lraphael's picture

cheetahs

Which way do you think the cheetah on the left is facing?Which way do you think the cheetah on the right is facing?Do you think the cheetahs can be facing both ways?

I asked people 3 questions about this image:

/exchange/ambigfig/cheetahs

The graph about the cheetah on the left had 17 people say that the cheetah is facing backwards and 9 people say that the cheetah is facing forwards.

The graph about the cheetah on the right had 18 people say that the cheetah is facing backwards and 8 people say that the cheetah is facing forwards.

The graph about if the people thought the cheetahs could go both ways had 23 people say yes and 6 people say no.

What I was trying to prove was that the picture is not only ambigious, but it all depends on a personal view. I only had the people look at the graph for 10 seconds and answer each question. The interesting part was that even though people said they could go both ways, only one person answered that both cheetahs were facing fowards. The point of my survey was to make people decide which direction the cheetahs were facing, and to see if there was more of a trend. I wanted to see what way the majority of people though the cheetah was facing, I thought it was going to be 50/50 but it wasn't so maybe next time instead of asking on surveymonkey.com I will ask in person which they think to make sure that they only look at the survey for 10 seconds at a time.

Leigh 

Reply

To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
1 + 0 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.