Paper2

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Empirical Analysis of Humor
(15% -> 3-4 pages per group)

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What? Think like Provine by conducting a “sidewalk neuroscience” experiment similar to the ones he details in Laughter and writing a 1000-1500 word group lab report that emulates the major stylistic tendencies of scientific writing.

When? Please make sure that a first draft of your group’s report is available on Google Docs by Tuesday, April 29 at 11:00 p.m. Class will not meet as usual on the following day (Wednesday, April 30); instead each group will have a conference with me for 40-50 minutes to discuss potential revisions for the final draft. On Monday, May 5 we will have class in order to do some writing workshop activities. Each group should be prepared to read its abstract to the class that day, as I suspect you’ll all be very curious about the other experiments. I will also access your final draft on Google Docs, so you don’t actually need to turn it in, just stop working on it by Tuesday, May 6 at 11:00 p.m.

How do we sign up for the conferences? At the top of the first draft Google Doc that I’ll be looking at on Tuesday night, you should indicate at least three non-overlapping periods of 50 minutes during which all members of your group can meet on either Wednesday, April 30 or Thursday, May 1. I’ll email you as soon as possible to tell you when and where.

Why? There is one central premise behind every section of Writing 139 Writing, including my own. The premise is that the standards of ‘good’ writing vary to some extent between academic disciplines because even when studying the same general topic, two disciplines may take very different approaches, and these different approaches may dictate that writing in these disciplines serve a different function. Pairing Critchley and Provine, who ask very different questions and use writing to perform very different functions, is a good way to establish this “disciplinarity” premise and allow you to put it into practice. We will have a more complex debate about disciplinarity, thinking, and writing towards the end of the quarter. As for the collaborative nature of the assignment, this is a time saver for you and me both, and it also conforms to a standard disciplinary practice in the physical and social sciences.

How? The most important thing you need to do as a group is decide what your experiment will study, and what its methods of measurement will be. Anything that cannot be observed and measured somehow is, as Provine says, “logic and anecdote” rather than “empirical data” (11), and therefore not science. Use the assigned portions of Provine’s book as models for what sort of experiments you can conduct. Don’t repeat one of his experiments exactly, but some of them could be revisited from a slightly different angle.

What about, you know, the writing part? Good question. As we’ve discussed, writing in the sciences functions to communicate thinking that has already taken place more than to serve as a means of thinking, so it is indeed sensible to talk about the “writing part” as distinct from the “thinking part.” I want to emphasize that the format you will be using for this assignment is not exactly the format that Provine uses in his book. Even more so than On Humor, Laughter has been written to accommodate a non-specialist audience. The format we want to emulate is the one Provine uses in his research articles, although you can get a very good sense of the way he thinks from his book. I am not a scientist, so I will be drawing this format from two main sources: the library tutorial on “Scientific Method and Scholarly Communication” and an exhaustive scan of lab report formatting guidelines posted on various university webpages. I should also note that there is some variance in format between scientific sub-disciplines and even different publications, as you saw on Monday, but the format below is still broadly applicable.

<<Abstract>> The entire paper in miniature. The best approach is to boil each of the other sections down to one or two sentences, so do this last. This is not part of your first draft and it will be done collaboratively.

<<Introduction>> What the topic is (e.g. humor as a desirable attribute in a romantic partner, the contagiousness of laughter), why it’s worth studying (e.g. to illuminate the social function of humor and the difference that gender roles play therein, to clarify the sociality of laughter), what has been said about it in the past (refer to Critchley, and/or any authors you cited in Paper 1, and/or any of the essays your group members wrote), and what your basic hypothesis is.

<<Methods>> Explain how you set up your experiment. What are the observable data and how you did you attempt to measure them (e.g. by looking at eharmony.com profiles and sorting them according to certain defined categories, by counting the number or length of laughs that a group of three made when shown a certain program versus a group of ten). Why you chose this method (practical/logistical concerns included).

<<Results>>: The raw data you obtained, stated as precisely as possible according to the standards of measurement you chose. A chart may or may not be helpful. (It is unlikely that your experiment will require any statistical methods beyond basic arithmetic.)

<<Discussion>> Analysis of the results you obtained. Were they expected or unexpected? Do they validate or invalidate prior research on the topic? Do they prove your hypothesis? Disprove it? Neither? Do they suggest a new and different hypothesis? What should future researchers do to improve or extend your study (e.g. a variation in topic or method, a longer time period, more experimental subjects (people) or different ones).

How should my group handle division of labor? I gave this a lot of thought based on what you guys told me on Monday. I believe there should be assigned roles because otherwise you’re going to spend half of your limited time trying to figure out a schema for assigning roles. The four roles relate to the four main sections of the format above. I put the roles on your Google Doc, so you can finalize them there. The main criteria for choosing roles are your writing strengths, your familiarity/comfort with conducting a simple scientific experiment, and your schedule for the upcoming two weeks; I explain this in greater detail on the Google Doc. But even after taking on divided roles you should still help each other as much as possible.

How do I use Google Docs? First you need to sell your soul for eternity to these diabolical geniuses, if you haven’t already. Go to the website, click the blue box that says “Get Started” and fill out the form. Please use your UCI email address even if you already have a Google ID, and you should be able to use your regular email password too. Make sure to put your name in, which is optional on the form. Then it sends you a confirmation email with a link to the site; you need to sign in once to finalize the process. I have already set up all five of the group documents. You should see your group’s document when you sign in. Please email or call me if this is presenting a problem of any kind.

What happens if someone accidentally erases the Google Doc, or makes a revision I violently disagree with? Click “File,” then “Revision History.” It stores everything. If this still makes you paranoid, click “File,” then “Download File as” to preserve an off-line copy every now and then.

What else would be helpful for facilitating group collaboration? You could all just meet in person if you think it’s feasible to do so. Otherwise, I’m thinking some kind of conference call or instant messaging would help, but you might find that it’s possible to communicate within the Google Doc itself by highlighting/bolding/italicizing your side comments to distinguish them from your main text. The most important things are obviously hard work and generosity of spirit.

How will this paper be graded? OK let me start with a general rubric like the last time. A “B” range paper will report, through a reasonable approximation of the stylistic traits of scientific writing, a Provine-type “sidewalk neuroscience” experiment. A “D” range paper will have major problems in experimental design/execution, and writing. A “C” range paper will have major problems in experimental design/execution, or writing, or a major accumulation of minor problems in all three. An “A” range paper will, despite the short amount of time given for the assignment, be a novel contribution to scientific thinking on the topic of humor. In other words, it will give me something new to think about and I will want to incorporate its ideas in future courses on this topic. An “F” range paper, I guess, would result if the group failed to complete the paper, or if an individual failed to complete their role. You notice I am dodging the important issue, which is whether the grades will be assigned to individuals or groups. I will give you the choice and explain how it will work at the conference. But honestly I think they’re going to turn out the same either way because you’ll be collaborating so much.

Any nitpicky formatting stuff? No. I’ve never actually used Google docs, so I’m going to be charitable here. I already set up a formatted template for you.

Any add-ons like last time? Please turn in your individual study questions by email or hard copy on or before Wednesday, May 7. There will also be a new acknowledgements/reflections thingie that I’ll give each of you at the group conference.

Can I please see another gratuitous neti picture? This is why they pay me the big bucks.