Synesthesia, he said, is the union of senses otherwise unconnected in a normal brain. He described Albert Einstein using shapes instead of numbers to complete mathematical algorithms, and briefly scoffed at the absurd idea of colored letters. Could it be that none of my classmates saw our teacher’s name in purple with flecks of sandy brown? Were As not inherently fire-truck red nor Z’s metallic gray? Didn’t everyone find it efficient to memorize phone numbers according to their unique color palates? … Confused and bewildered, I stumbled home, repeating over and over the word my teacher had mentioned so nonchalantly: synesthesia, synesthesia, synesthesia. Powering up my computer, I immediately began to read every article I could find on this mysterious disorder, disease, condition, or superpower. It seemed as though researchers did not even know how to classify my sixth sense. As it turns out, every day of my life, I’ve been wearing rainbow-colored glasses. Cemented to my eyes like irremovable contact lenses, they turn letters into colors, music into tastes, and time into space …

My work on this project has made me see the connection between science and the social policy and historical issues that are so important to me. I did not understand before how valuable and critical social science analytical tools could be in understanding what I consider to be key moral issues of our time, such as what I studied here – how to reduce health and poverty in this country and abroad. Now I appreciate that through carefully collected and studied data, we can learn much to improve the quality and effectiveness of the policies implemented to address poverty and health … In addition to appreciating the worth of scientific research, I found a higher level of independence through the completion of this project than I realized possible in high school. Free of assignments and grades, I took on this project to experiment and learn for my own pleasure and increased knowledge. It surprised me to find myself not only spending hours obsessing over the project itself, but also enjoying learning a data analysis program called STATA in which I coded data, cleaned data, ran regressions, and analyzed results. Before undertaking this project I would have said that I was not “the type” to master statistical thinking or analysis, but I was wrong.

When one asks a group of students at any school in the country if they have ever been involved in and/or affected by bullying almost every hand shoots up into the air. Such instances demonstrate the rising incidence of bullying in each community, the country, and throughout the world. Although it is obvious that bullying occurs in schools, teachers, the adults closest to the problem, have been avoided by students. Prior studies already established statistics indicating that teachers are the last group to be approached, followed by family and friends, in cases of students who witness bullying. This study explores the reasons behind this phenomenon and proposes the question ‘why do students choose not to approach teachers about bullying? . . . Although behavioral science may not appear to have much math involved, math actually plays a major role in the research and especially in data analyses. Mathematics, and particularly statistics, was utilized to analyze data in the form of correlation analyses, Independent T-tests, and Analyses of Variance. Behavioral science, although dealing with human subjects and their interactions with others, still involves testable explanations based on logic and facts. Mathematic analyses and statistical decisions were paramount to the interpretation of results; I was able to form valid conclusions from the data and offer explanations as to why students are unwilling to approach teachers about bullying situations.