Optimism
Wint, Htut Khine, Natalie and
Eleanor
Why Optimism?
● Benefits to a person-Good Trait?
o How to improve oneself
● How mental attitude affects society
o What changes in society if more Optimists?
o Good or Bad thing for society?
● Testing our own personal hypotheses
o Put them on the line!
Goals
● Defining Optimism
o Finding questions that relate
● Calculating Optimism score from ?’s
● What affects optimism? (Question 1)
● What optimism effects? (Question 2)
Optimism Definition
● Hopefulness or
positivity about
the future, our
role in society
and outcomes
Data sets
● Didn’t have a data set that directly measured optimism.
● PEW
o Used to calculate optimism score
o Explanatory and response variables for optimism
● Gallup Poll
○ Collected National data about how optimistic people
are about their city
○ Used to validate the results of our own optimism
calculation
Cleaning the Data
●
●
●
●
Change to CSV format
Removing unnecessary columns
Convert optimism questions to numerics
Change “Don’t know/Refused” to “NA”
o Don’t know is ambiguous
● Calculating Optimism score
● Change states to regions - Gallup Poll
Optimism Score
● Chose 23 questions from the Pew study.
● Weighted each question by relevance to
optimism
● Gallup Poll, Distribution!
Optimism Distributions
Hypotheses - Question 1
● Explanatory variables for Optimism
o Demographics (Age, Gender, etc.)
o Least likely to be affected by optimism
 No crossover
● See if certain demographics lead to higher optimism
o Groups with societal advantages would be more
optimistic (Caucasian, Upper Class, Christians)
o Women more optimist
 Assumption that women are more positive
Findings and Analysis
● Gender, Race, Religion
Findings and Analysis-Income
Findings and Analysis-Age
Hypotheses-Question 2
● Evolved through analysis of Question 1
● How does mental attitude affect views on
society?
o Optimism is good for society
 Subjective
o Optimists would be open to change in
society

View change as good thing
Findings and Analysis-Question 2
https://hwin16.shinyapps.io/OptimismApp/
Complications
● Lacked details in demographics
o “Not employed”
● Long Questionnaire and Phone Interview
o Not accurate
● Gallup Poll
o City Optimism-Not perfect comparison
● Wider spread of demographics
o Many Southern, Christians, White
Future Analysis/Application
● Data set not specifically about optimism
o Make specific poll for optimism
o Accurate score
● Investigate the role Realism
● More effectively promote social change
o Focus on Pessimists
● Use in therapy
o More effectively treatments
o Understand what causes poor mental attitude
Conclusions
● Most people are optimistic!
● Unchangeable demographics do not
affect optimism
● Other demographics have a logical trend
● Optimists are open to societal changes
Class Optimism!
Class Minimum:
Class Maximum:
Class Mode:
Class Average (mean):
Class Optimism!
Class Minimum:
Class Maximum:
Class Mode:
Class Average (mean):
1
Class Optimism!
Class Minimum:
Class Maximum:
Class Mode:
Class Average (mean):
1
9
Class Optimism!
Class Minimum:
Class Maximum:
Class Mode:
Class Average (mean):
1
9
8
Class Optimism!
Class Minimum:
Class Maximum:
Class Mode:
Class Average (mean): 6.36
1
9
8
Questions?
Link to our website:
http://people.cornellcollege.edu/whnin15/we
bsite