1. By: Jaskarn, Kabir, Sukhi, and Nav
The Random Phone
By: Jaskarn, Kabir, Sukhi, and
Nav

2. Purpose
We got a Iphone 5 and placed it in the foyer during last block and left it on the ground to see if anyone approaches it or picks it up. Once someone picks it up we wanted to ask the person many questions, including why they picked it up? and what they would do with it? At first the people were clueless and had no idea of what was going on. Then we explained our experiments to them and they answered deliberately. Overall, we wanted to figure out how people would react to something they want.

3. Experiment Setup
To set up our experiment we went to the foyer during last block, and brought two phones with us.
We put the expensive new Iphone 5 on the floor in the foyer and got one person to stand close to it while others observe from 6-7metres .
When we saw that someone had approached the phone and was ready to pick it up we called it and waited for the person to pick it up
From there on we kept calling until either the person picks it up or if he decided to walk away with it we approach him and ask questions

4. Confounding variables.
People were planning to take the phone and walk away with it.
The phone could have been damaged
Another thing that went wrong was that we made it to obvious, and the person was scared to pick the IPhone up since he was a younger student.
Too many people in the area, the phone could have been secretly taken if unobserved.

5. Results
Many people just walked by the Iphone because they felt uncomfortable approaching it.
A group of younger students stood in front of it, and one person from the group decided to pick it up.
The student declined the call twice but picked it up the third time, he was shocked and confused about what's going on but we explained the experiment to him. The experiment showed how desperate someone can be to pick up a new phone off the floor.

6. People Who Noticed the phone.

7. Survey of why they wanted the phone.
To return it to its
rightful owner
Sell the phone for $
Desperate to own an IPhone 5
10%
40%
50%

8. Conclusion
We were really surprised because only one person picked up the phone. When the phone was ringing he was trying to steal the phone by declining it. The first time we called, the victim had declined the phone, along with the second. Then finally he picked it up and said “hello” on the third outgoing call. The student ended up being in shock because he thought he was in trouble for attempting to take one of our phones, but we explained our experiment to him and told him to answer our survey and he agreed.

9. Hypothesis & Reaction
The experiment turned to be completely opposite to our hypothesis. We hypothesized that someone would take the phone and not answer the calls it was receiving, which was somewhat right, but the student actually ended up answering the phone and saying “hello”. We found this surprising as well because it shows how eager someone can be to answer a call even if its not their own. Lastly based on the results, our experiment does not back up our hypothesis because we found it kind of awkward for someone to answer someone else’s random phone sitting on the floor.