Observations and Discussions

The following observations can be determined from the table 8 results.  We can discuss the results endlessly with so many groups so we choose only the ones with enough of a sample size.  The results from smaller sample sizes are unreliable to make any sound conclusions. 

1.    The group of 34 participants averaged 0.67 shots improvement using PHYSICAL practice as compared to their results using MENTAL Imagery practice.  The group averaged 2.83 shots completed out of 10.  This means that there is a 23.9% improvement in our sample group when using PHYSICAL practice.

2.    Although not every individual of the 34 test participants showed that PHYSICAL practice improved their scores over the MENTAL Imagery practice, what is found is that almost every category group analyzed except for the Control Male category showed that PHYSICAL PRACTICE did produce better results than MENTAL Imagery practice.  There are 26 groups analyzed and only the Control Group Male did not improve with PHYSICAL practice.  But we can understand why because our Assistant Principal, Mr. Slemko is the only person on that group.  He must have had a tough day when he did his last set of shots.

3.    Females with a sample size of 7 did better as a group than the males with a sample size of 25.  The girls averaged 1.5 shots improvement with PHYSICAL practice whereas the boys averaged less than 0.5 shots improvement with PHYSICAL practice.  Maybe the boys have more experience than the girls playing with balls so the benefit of receiving PHYSICAL practice in this experiment had less of an effect.  Maybe if the skill tested was more of a problem solving skill instead of a physical one like the basketball foul shots, the results might have been different.

4.    When we compared the results of Group 1 (PHYSICAL 1^st week and MENTAL 2^nd week) with the results of Group 2 (MENTAL 1^st week and PHYSICAL 2^nd week), we find that the first group had a better Shot Improvement (0.8 SI score as compared to a 0.5 SI score).  This might mean that too much mental preparation before the actual physical game could be a negative factor to performance.

5.    It appears that the group that has basketball experience with a sample size of 11 perform better with PHYSICAL practice as they averaged a 0.9 SI score than the non-experienced group.  The last group with a larger sample size of 21 averaged a 0.6 SI score.  This might mean that teachers might consider using more MENTAL Imagery practice techniques for people that are learning new skills.  But this does not mean that they should not use any PHYSICAL practice in replacement.

6.    Interestingly, the small group of five non-experienced girls seem to benefit from more PHYSICAL practice because they averaged a relatively high 1.8 SI score, the highest of any group.

7.    From table 7, we find that our Assistant Principal, Mr. Slemko had a SI score of -1 and that our Secretary, Mrs. McIssac has a SI score of -2.  Does that mean Principals are worse than Secretarys or adult males are less worse than adult females?  Too bad our Principal, Mrs. Turkstra was absent for our experiment … she might have been helpful in answering this question.  Actually, this observation is only in fun because the sample size of 1 is too small to get any conclusion. 

        There are many more analysis that can be determined from the use of sorting techniques using the Excel program.  We can learn a lot from playing with numbers.