Saturday, May 11, 2024

Cindy's Job At The Birch Street Nursing Home


My new experiment continued at the Birch Street Nursing Home today, as I attempt to answer once and for all whether breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Each Saturday for the duration of the experiment, I'm withholding breakfast from half the patients. And then I see how not starting the day with the meal affects their poker play. The first two weeks showed a significant difference between the fed group and the unfed group, and that trend continued today. However, I could not count some of the hands toward my data, because members of the unfed group got so frustrated sometimes that they threw their cards on the floor, and those hands weren't finished. I'll be curious to see how they do next Saturday when the experiment continues.

Saturday, May 4, 2024

Cindy's Job At The Birch Street Nursing Home


Is breakfast the most important meal of the day? My new experiment at the Birch Street Nursing Home is designed to answer this important question. Each Saturday for the duration of the experiment, I'm withholding breakfast from half the patients. And then I see how not starting the day with the meal affects their poker play. Last week, the unfed group won only twenty percent of the hands, and one of the players from that group took bites out of two of the cards. On Monday, I bought a new deck of playing cards, and used the laminating machine at school to protect each of the cards just in case Mrs. Henley tries to take a bite out of another one. And I'm glad I did, because more than once I saw her putting a card in her mouth. The data today backs up what I observed last week, that breakfast is important. The unfed group did even worse this week, winning only sixteen percent of the hands. I also noticed that the unfed group was more likely to complain about getting bad cards. The experiment will continue next Saturday.