Exam Physiology: Wearable Data

Published

July 22, 2026

NoteCheck Your Knowledge

  1. What variables were the researchers trying to measure?

  2. True or False: High Electrodermal activity (EDA) means the person being measured might be stressed.

NoteCheck Your Knowledge

  1. Why might we want to install add-on packages in R?

  2. How can we confirm that our data loaded correctly? Take a screenshot and point to your evidence.

  3. Looking at the timestamp column, how often are measurements being collected?

  4. How many rows of data, or observations, does this data have? Hint: look at the Environment Pane (top right) and see how many obs. you have.

NoteCheck Your Knowledge

  1. Run count(phys_data, test, studentID) %>% print(n=30) to see student and test combinations. How many observations does student S8 have for the Final? Take a screenshot showing this number.

  2. Which student has the lowest number of observations for the Final?

NoteCheck Your Knowledge

  1. Sort the hr column. What is the greatest heart rate observed? Which student was this? Take a screenshot of your evidence.

  2. Which student had the greatest eda values? Which exam was this? Take a screenshot of your evidence.

NoteCheck Your Knowledge

  1. Change the code above slightly, replacing hr with eda. Run the changed code in your console. What is the correlation between the temp and eda variables? Take a screenshot of your evidence.

  2. What does the correlation value tell you about the relationship between these two variables? (E.g., as one goes up, the other does what ?)

  3. (Optional) Try changing the code again to look at the correlation value between eda and hr. Run the changed code in your console. What is the correlation between these variables, and what is the relationship? Take a screenshot of your evidence.

NoteCheck Your Knowledge

  1. Change the code that creates the plots slightly, replacing hr with eda. Run the changed code in your console. Take a screenshot of your plots.

  2. Which test/exam appears to have the greatest electrodermal activity (EDA) for student S9?

  3. To confirm your results, calculate the mean eda for each test. Run the code above to calculate the means, remembering to replace hr with eda. Do the results surprise you? Take a screenshot of your results table in the console.

  4. (Optional) Try running 1-3 above with student S8 instead of S9. You’ll need to replace anywhere S9 was mentioned in the code! Take a screenshot of your plots/results.

NoteCheck Your Knowledge

  1. Change the code that creates the plots, replacing hr with eda. Run the changed code in your console. Take a screenshot of your plots.

  2. What conclusions can you draw about stress in these two students, based on their EDA measurements?

  3. (Optional) To confirm your results, compare the mean eda for each test and student (S9 and S8). You can return to the code from Part 4 and re-calculate it if you need to. Do the results back up your conclusions from question 2? Take a screenshot of your results table in the console.

  4. (Optional) Try running 1-3 above with two different students. You’ll need to replace anywhere S9 or S8 was mentioned in the code with the students of your choice. Take a screenshot of your plots/results.

NoteGoing Deeper

  1. Based on your plots and information so far, do you have any ideas (hypotheses!) about how stress and grades might be related?

  2. Would looking at more data help you feel more or less comfortable with your hypotheses?

  3. Look at some of the values for temp. Are these realistic? Why or why not?