Sex and Direction.
Sex and Direction. In the paper “The Relation of Sex and Sense of Direction to Spatial Orientation in an Unfamiliar Environment” (Journal of Environmental Psychology, Vol 20, pp.17-28), Sholl et al. published the results of examining the sense of direction of 30 male and 30 female students. After being taken to an unfamiliar wooded park, the students were given some spatial orientation tests, including pointing to south, which tested their absolute frame of reference. The students pointed by moving a pointer attached to a 360 degree protractor. Following are the absolute pointing error, in degrees, of the participants. Male 13 130 39 33 10 13 68 18 3 11 38 23 60 5 9 59 5 86 22 70 58 3 167 15 30 8 20 67 26 19 Female 14 8 20 3 138 122 78 69 111 3 128 31 18 35 111 109 36 27 32 35 12 27 8 3 80 91 68 66 176 15 At the 1% significance level, do the data provide sufficient evidence to conclude that, on average, males have a better sense of direction and in particular, a better frame of reference than females? (note; x1=37.6, s1=38.5, x2==55.8, and s2 =48.3)