Laurel Miller

One of the most common pieces of conventional wisdom I hear during the winter is that common colds are caused by being chilled, or having wet hair and going outside. I have never known this speculation to be true, so in order to test it, I would need to have a group of people as test subjects. The types of data I would have to collect are: the test subject’s temperature before the experiment, the temperature outside, and the subject’s temperature after walking outside for a set a mount of time. Half of the group would walk around with wet hair and the other half would walk without. Soon after the experiment, I would follow up to find out which of the subject’s had contracted an illness, and figure out what group they were in.

I have often heard people say that exposing kids to violent games, shows, or movies leads to bad or violent behavior from those children later on in life. In order to test this, I would choose two sets of children and have half of them watch violent tv shows and the other half not see them at all. I would then have to monitor their actions as they age. This would be an extensive experiment and hard to truly test because of the amount of time it would take, but if there are enough kids to test it might actually be accurate and I could possibly see if these shows do in fact affect their behavior.

As a frequent ice chewer, I have been told that “chewing ice ruins/breaks your teeth”. Although I have been doing this for years and my teeth are perfectly normal, it could be proven accurate. In order to disprove or prove this “conventional wisdom”, I could have a dentists examine the teeth of “ice chewers” throughout a duration of time to see if chewing ice actually ruins or breaks teeth.

One piece of conventional wisdom I’ve heard is “money can’t buy you happiness.” As some people may believe this is true, I would test it by developing a list of 150 people (3 from each state, and 1 person from each economic class) and sending them a survey to be filled out. Questions will be constructed to figure out: 1. if they believe in this saying, 2. if they made the transformation from depression to happiness by accumulating more wealth and 3. if they ever went from low class to upper class and if they became happier 4. if they ever had a transition in their life my making more money one year and how that year was for them 5. and the lower and middle class can be given the opportunity to make the transition and if they are happier at the end of the experience, while the upper class will be treated vice versa.

One example of conventional wisdom that I found interesting is “you got what you paid for” which simply means the price of an item represents the quality of the item. The cheaper the item, the lower the quality. This quote can be supported or disapproved by collecting data of the reviews made on online store website. For example, a rice cooker. Collect the customers’ review on different rice cookers in terms of the prices which is the cheap one, the moderate and the expensive one. Then see whether all of the rice cookers have the same positive/negative feedback by the customer or the comments were mixed.

People often believe that by doing tons of cardio you will lose weight faster. However, every body type is different and reacts differently to certain forms of exercise. While some people do lose weight due to cardio, others have gained weight. This can be proven through data saying high intensity intervals work better and that lifting heavy has a more stimulative effect on your metabolism and central nervous system than a long run or spin class ever could.

One piece of conventional wisdom is that processed foods are bad for you. To prove or negate this statement, we could take a large sample of men with the same BMI, and take blood samples to test their blood sugar, cholesterol, and other health levels. Then we would have half of the group eat 2000 calories daily of only whole foods for 3 months, and have the other half eat 2000 calories daily of only processed foods for 3 months. After the three months, we would test their blood again to see if their levels improved, got worse, or stayed the same, and make a conclusion about processed foods and your health.

I always hear “You get what you payed for” whether it is buying something expensive or inexpensive. For example, when I was in search for a computer for college, everyone recommended an Apple laptop. Apple sells their laptops for over $1000, with a high price it is almost always assumed to be better and receive more. But is that always true? The data I could collect to support or disprove this statement is to gather information on storage, analytical skills, size, versatility, speed and many more characteristics of quality computers. I can collect this data from different computers ranging in different prices and then compare.

One common example of conventional wisdom is that “Fat people are just lazy and have no self-discipline.” It doesn’t matter how much you weigh because there is no correlation between how much a person weighs and how productive he/she is. The definition of the word “fat” is also different from person to person. In order to test this, I would have people of all different sizes be given an optional task to complete by the end of the day. At the end of the day, I would see who finished the task and who didn’t, and see if there is a correlation between weight and productivity.

As a female, something that has always been looming throughout my teenage years is the saying “beauty is pain.” I’ve always found this statement to be quite dramatic because I don’t believe that “with pain comes beauty.” In order to disprove this type of conventional wisdom, I would collect data based on a specific beauty regime that often causes others pain or one of which is known to be painful. In this instance, I’d test the sentiments of women who wax their legs. Seeing as smooth, shaven legs is considered “beautiful,” I would send out a survey asking women 1.) do you wax your legs and 2.) does waxing your legs hurt? Obviously, this would also have a lot to do with the woman’s pain tolerance but it can make the argument that beauty does not (always) cause pain nor is it the same entity.

One example of conventional wisdom is that the more teachers with a much easier class environment will lead to students getting higher grades. This is often not the case. If teachers offer a class with very little work or stress, it often leads to students slacking and getting grades that are much worse than that of a teacher who pushed his or her students much more. This can be proven using data that shows which teachers offer the least amount of work, and the grades of the students in those classes.

A piece of conventional wisdom that I am familiar with is the concept of “If you don’t use it you lose it” in regards to skills both academically and physically. I believe that the data would support this, however it would be interesting to see if it applies to both physical and mental abilities. Of course without any activity an athlete would lose their skill, however certain professional athletes seem to get away with practicing less than their peers. It can also seem that while some students must practice often, others find material comes very easy to them consistently once they understand it initially. We could let athletes practice at a normal rate for a season as something to test against and then have them play a season where they practice half as much to determine an association. A similar test could be applied to ones mental abilities in the form of a timed aptitude test comparing a period of time where they study often to one where they study half as often. After the experiments it could be seen if there is evidence to support the conventional piece of wisdom “If you don’t use it, you lose it”.

I often hear people say that drinking coffee every day is bad for your health. I drink coffee on a daily basis and have yet to notice a difference in my health. Although it would depend on each person’s lifestyle and coffee order, you could collect data to compare the health of people who drink coffee every day versus people who don’t drink coffee to see if coffee can actually have a negative effect on people’s health.

The ideal path for students to take is usually said to be immediately after high school they should go off to a four year university. However this may not be the best option for them, maybe taking a year or two to attend a community college and get acclimated to a college class work load could do wonders for students. Saying this as a transfer student from a community college, my one year there has helped me not be overwhelmed by the amount college classes want from their students, not to mention it saves money. The potential data to test this could involve observing four year university students’ GPA versus that of a transfer from a community college. Another data that would either prove or disprove this hypothesis would be to test stress level among students from both groups, with my hypothesis saying that transfer students would have less stress. Based on the test results, it could change the outlook on how students view post high school plans.

I have often heard, you must have a good business plan to be successful in the business world. To disprove this claim, I would survey CEOs of long standing businesses. I would use the data to determine whether these CEOs started off with a good business plan or if they didn’t have a business plan in mind at all and how this contributed to their success.

One piece of conventional wisdom that I definitely hear in college, is that beer makes you fat, as oppose to drinking liquor. Hence the creation of the word “beer gut” As a bartender, I never thought this was true. If you drink 10 beers vs. 10 jack and cokes, I am sure the jack and cokes contain much more calories and sugar than the beer, however this needs to be proven. What I would do to test this is to get a group of skinny, ready-to-party freshmen, where one group is only allowed to drink liquor, and the other group is only allowed to drink beer. I would test how much % of their weight increased over their first year at school. There will be many variables, such as how much do they actually drink, however on average each group should drink around the same amount of alcohol.

Many people say that an apple away keeps the doctor away. But we don’t really know if this is true. In order to figure out if this is true, I would conduct an experiment. In this experiment, I will find people of the same age, weight, BMI, etc. and split them up into 2 groups, one of which will be the control group and the other group, who will eat 1 apple a day. Over a period of 6 months, I would assess how many times both groups have doctor’s visits during this period. I will take out doctor’s visits that would be considered outliers, such as emergency accidents, etc. And then, I would see if the non-control group really has had less doctor’s visits in a 6 month period just because they are an apple a day.

One common example of conventional wisdom is that cracking your joints causes arthritis. This can be proved by going to people that have had a habit of cracking their fingers for a long time and see record the long term results. If you put all the results together you can see the trends and the possibility of arthritis being caused by cracking joints.

A piece of conventional wisdom that I’ve heard is the statement is “past performance is a good predictor of future performance”. This statement has been widely accepted to be true by the people in business, school, and sports. But that isn’t always the case and there are a ton of examples to use to disapprove this statement. The data that I would use to collect to test this is in sports especially since so many athletes are paid because of past performance and many flame out in the future. Collecting data of athletes that performed exceptional in the past, got a huge contract, and were busts in their future performance could be data used to disapprove that statement.

An example on conventional wisdom is “You have to earn more money.” This is completely subjective and depends on the type of person you are. Some people are completely content with the amount of money making and see no reason to need to get a better job to make more money. People that say this are saying this only to get a better lifestyle to buy nicer things, but that is not what everyone values. You could test this by taking a poll on people and ask them if they think they need to earn more money.

An example of “conventional wisdom” is people think they shopping on the Black Friday will save their money. in this case, they forget when people see the sale item, they may buy more products even they don’t need it at all. for the test, I will compare the family expense on black Friday to rest of days. also, I want to check the discount rate of the stores. as we know, there also have some good discount in other holidays.

I remember from when I was in high school people would always say that you have to have extremely high grades to get into specific colleges. This I believe is a prime example on conventional wisdom because although intelligence is a major deciding factor in the admissions process, nowadays it seems that many elite colleges are accepting students based on who they are as a whole and not what their transcripts define them as. I would disprove this claim by collecting data on an incoming class based on grades, background, extracurricular activities, etc. I would then use the data to compare what percentages of students were accepted with lower grades but stood out in other areas with the percentage of students who alone had exceptional grades.

Growing up I often heard that you can’t have a good, successful career without a college degree. However, I’ve heard of many CEOs of successful businesses that don’t have college degrees. One of the ways I would disprove this would be to do a survey of current CEOs or top executives of over 100 businesses and see how many of them do and don’t have college degrees. This data would show what percentage of the sample surveyed doesn’t have a college degree, showing just how many people managed to have a very successful career without a formal education.

A common example of conventional wisdom that I have often hear, is that you should get a college degree if you want to be successful in your life. I believe that this can be disproven because some people just might not be cut out for college or sometimes people just do not think it is necessary. Often times society looks down upon others who do not decide to get a degree because they think they are not smart. However, that is not always the case as many successful CEO’s are people who decided not to go to college. One way you can collect data on this topic is by looking at the top CEO’s and seeing who got a degree and who did not. Another way is to research the average income between people who only graduated high school or people who graduated high school and college to see which ones are the most successful.

The conventional wisdom statement I first thought of is that practice makes perfect, or those who practice something more will be more skilled than those who do not. I believe this is generally true, however some people are born to be experts in certain areas. The way to test this statement is to have to groups of people who have never practiced a certain activity, and have one group practice for a specified time while the other group does not. One example could be shooting free throws in basketball, the two groups of people must have no basketball skills prior to the experiment. One group would practice taking free throws for a specified time period while the other does not. After the time period is over, each person would take a few free throws, and the percentage of free throws made could be calculated. From the calculations you could derive knowledge of how practice impacts performance.

Some conventional wisdom I have heard over the years is the idea that being successful in the business world is all about the connections you make with other people and colleagues. Basically, the more people you build relationships with in the business world, the more likely it is that opportunities will come available to you. While I believe this holds true to some extent, I would still test my hypothesis by asking wealthy business owners/ partners how they got started.
Grace Stuart

One piece of conventional wisdom a lot of younger people hear is that if you don’t go to college or get good grades that you won’t end up with a good job. While that may be true for some people there are plenty of other people who have started their own businesses and never went to college. To collect information on this I would survey different CEOs or founders of companies to see if they went to college and if they did what their GPA was when they graduated. Through this data I would determine if there was a relationship between their success in the professional world and their education.

An example of a Conventional wisdom is that “Money can buy happiness” or “Money can’t buy happiness” is that true? these two quotes are wrong and we can disprove them by claiming that rich and poor people are humans and they’re alike. And there are many rich people that they are not happy because of a health issue or for what ever reason. Either statement can be disprove and can’t be a fact.

Often in life people tell us that if your plan in life isn’t working, you should change directions and try something else instead. Although many people follow this rule of life, I am a big believer in following your goals and dreams until you reach them. I believe that even if you don’t hit your intended end goal, you can still learn a lot about yourself and about life itself by aiming for your biggest dreams and trying to achieve them. To test out this piece of conventional wisdom, you could find a group of people with a set of goals and periodically check on those that decide to give up and those that have stuck to their goal. I would check the progress up to 3-5 years to see what the people that stuck to their goal have learned and if they feel it was the correct choice to stick with it. I would also check to see if those that gave up have regrets about giving up.

I have always heard that students who attend class get better grades. To test this, I would record all the student’s attendance in a certain class and compare their attendance with their grade. This would allow me to identify any correlation between the two. I would do this for several classes to get a more accurate result.

One piece of conventional wisdom I would hear a lot is “violent video games lead to poorly behaved kids/violent adults,” which I never really believed, but most of the adults in my family did. To test this statement, I could collect data from an experiment studying children who do and do not play violent video games, and monitor their behavior for a long period of time. I could also study violent offenders and interview whether or not they played video games growing up, and what kind of video games they played.

An example of conventional wisdom that I hear often is that having the AC on in a car uses much more gas than rolling the windows down. To determine whether or not this is true I would compare the amount of gas used in a car with the air conditioning on to the amount of gas used in the same car on the same route with the windows down.

One piece of conventional wisdom that I’ve heard is that you shouldn’t go outside when it is cold because you will get the common cold. One piece of data you can use to disprove or prove this statement is looking up data showing a link between common colds and cold weather. Another piece of data you could use is the data on the common cold posted by the CDC and see the ways to attract a cold. This will either prove or disprove this piece of conventional wisdom

Conventional wisdom would say that getting a job with good job security and adequate compensation is much more likely when having a college degree. To measure the truth of this wisdom, I would first identify specific occupations and group them by their likelihood of requiring a college degree. Then, consulting sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I would collect occupation-specific data such as figures on compensation and amount of jobs in the market. This data could then be summarized and evaluated across the previously made groups. Perhaps this method would find that most of the better paying jobs available to the workforce are trade-based or in fields of manual labor.