Ethan is a baseball player and an avid collector of baseball cards. He is also very involved in politics and has worked on campaigns for two years. Someday he would like to be the governor of the state of Kansas. "This is my life's dream, and I think I will truly be able to make a difference in people's lives," he says.
Ethan's mentor is his brother Noah. "He is really my science hero and the person that I look to for guidance."
Ethan noticed that he was making "careless errors" on math problems when they were presented horizontally, but that he was much more successful when the problems were written vertically. He wanted to see if his fifth-grade classmates were having the same problem.
Ethan wrote two math tests using grade-appropriate problems. Two versions of each test were made—one written in a vertical format and one written in a horizontal format. Each of the four 10-minute tests was given to the same students on four different days. Ethan received approval for the project and had informed consent forms completed by his 28 participants and their parents before testing began. His math and science teacher supervised the testing. When the tests were scored, Ethan found that the vertical format resulted in fewer errors. More than 65 percent of the students scored higher on the vertical tests. Twenty percent of those students scored significantly higher, missing at least four of the same problems when they were written horizontally. Ethan hypothesized that this could be because the horizontal format does not allow space for scratch work and requires students to rewrite the problem.
