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I have always had an inkling that being outdoors inherently makes a person feel better and more rejuvenated, but I hadn’t figured out a way to quantify the results until recently in my statistics class at school. The premise behind my research was the theory of biophilia, an idea proposed by Edward Wilson, a biologist and naturalist (1929-). He has written several books including The Diversity of Life, The Future of Life, and The Social Conquest of Earth. In addition to being a conservationist and advocate for biodiversity, Wilson is also a world renowned expert on ants. First published in 1986, Wilson’s personal book, Biophilia, explored the meaning of the literal concept “a love of life.” According to the book, biophilia is the “connection that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.” (E.O. Wilson, Biophilia, 1986). To me, life can be anything from parks, animal, plants, and other humans, to weather, the sun, oceans, and broad biomes. However, in order to prove this theory, I generalized the meaning of “love of life” to simply enjoying outdoors and intrinsically feeling better after an encounter with nature. Although many studies have already been done to prove that being outdoors contributes to human health and vitality (an increase in vitamin D uptake, improved mental concentration, exercise, etc), I was more interested in the psychological aspects of the idea. For example, does one’s mood improve and overall sense of well-being increase after smelling fresh air, feeling the sun tickle one’s face, and seeing animals in their natural habitat?
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E.O. Wilson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson |
To prove this notion, I used statistics to show that biophilia affects teenagers (ages 15-18) as well, not just adults who feel physically better after being outside. I asked a sample of 97 teenagers from my school, “Are you in a better mood after being outdoors (30 minutes or more)?” The answer choices were either “yes,” “no,” or “no difference.” Although I concede that my sample was not entirely randomly selected, gaining a true sample representative of the whole population is long, difficult, and often very expensive. I polled five specific classes: psychology, physics honors, biology honors, AP English language and composition, and world history honors in order to obtain a more diverse sample with students of different ages. It is also true that confounding variables such as the difficulty of the class, the ratio of males to females, the time of day this question was asked, and the effect of past experiences on the student may have made the sample biased, but still approximately normal (a bell curve graph through the central limit theorem). The Central Limit Theorem in statistics basically means that if a sample size is large enough (generally greater than 30), the distribution graph of all the sample means will be roughly symmetric.
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| Normal Distribution Graphs http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Normal_Distribution_PDF.svg |
After entering all the data from the samples I received, I ran a one sample proportion test and a 95% confidence interval for proportions to determine/estimate the true proportion of teenagers who are in a better mood after being outdoors. See my math here if you are interested in learning statistics. After discovering that roughly 78% of students responded “yes” to the question and consequently running a significance test, the proportion (tested against a population proportion of .5, to be safe) of teens who answer 78% or higher was .0000000178. This number is significant at nearly every level because it is so minuscule that my sample proportion of 78% couldn’t have happened by chance. Therefore, I have strong evidence to believe that true proportion of teenagers (15-18) who are in a better mood after being surrounded by nature is greater than 50% (the population proportion). This supports the theory of biophilia for teenagers because most young people do feel affinity for parks, wildlife, and abiotic elements according to my findings. Also, I am 95% confident that the true proportion of teenagers 15-18 are in better mood from being outdoors (and thereby proving biophilia correct) is between 70% and 87%. This is optimistic news because my generation is more likely to advocate for energy and environment conservation; we also feel a responsibility towards nature, even if it is only for our own selfish enjoyment. Thank-you to all my teachers who let me poll their students!
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| Parque de Buen Retiro, Madrid |
