Four Minute Men

(noun)

Four Minute Men were volunteers authorized by President Woodrow Wilson to give public speeches on topics assigned to them by The Committee on Public Information. Topics focused on the American war effort and were presented during the four minutes of reel changing in movie theaters across the country.

Related Terms

Examples of Four Minute Men in the following topics:

  • War Propaganda

    • The committee also used direct human media in the form of about 75,000 "Four Minute Men," volunteers who delivered positive public messages about the war.
    • These talks were kept to four minutes, often during the time when reels were changed in movie theaters, which was considered the ideal length of time the average human attention span could be effectively maintained.
    • By the end of the war, the Four Minute Men had made more than 7.5 million speeches to 314 million people in 5,200 American communities.

  • The Hawthorne Effect

    • This effect was observed for minute increases in illumination.
    • In one of the studies, experimenters chose two women as test subjects and asked them to choose four other workers to join the test group.
    • Some of the variables were: giving two five-minute breaks (after a discussion with them on the best length of time), and then changing to two ten-minute breaks (not their preference).
    • Lloyd Warner between 1931 and 1932 on a group of fourteen men who put together telephone switching equipment.
    • Detailed observation between the men revealed the existence of informal groups or "cliques" within the formal groups.

  • Confidence intervals for nearly normal point estimates

    • In Exercise 4.1 on page 161, we computed a point estimate for the average difference in run times between men and women: women − men = 14.48 minutes.
    • This point estimate is associated with a nearly normal distribution with standard error SE = 2.78 minutes.
    • Thus, we are 95% confident that the men were, on average, between 9.03 and 19.93 minutes faster than women in the 2012 Cherry Blossom Run.
    • That is, the actual average difference is plausibly between 9.03 and 19.93 minutes with 95% confidence.
    • The proportion of men in the run10Samp sample is = 0.45.

  • Don't Just Do Something-Sit There!

    • I think he was right, and I'll describe four situations which I think prove his point.
    • After 20 minutes of chatter with Sally, I realized that what we were discussing might not mean much to my wife.
    • "I think," she continued, "we ought to start all our campus meetings this way, just being quiet for a minute or two."
    • As a culture, we also tend to respect and reward men and women who express themselves powerfully through words.
    • I've drawn one major lesson from the two-minute workshop quiet period and Masashi Sawada's patient attentiveness.

  • Point estimates

    • The sample mean $\bar{x}$= 95.61 minutes is called a point estimate of the population mean: if we can only choose one value to estimate the population mean, this is our best guess.
    • For example, we estimate the population standard deviation for the running time using the sample standard deviation, 15.78 minutes.
    • Suppose we want to estimate the difference in run times for men and women.
    • If $\bar{x}$ men = 87.65 and $\bar{x}$ women = 102.13, then what would be a good point estimate for the population difference?
    • Men ran about 14.48 minutes faster on average in the 2012 Cherry Blossom Run.

  • Confidence interval for the difference

    • Based on the samples, we are 95% confident that men ran, on average, between 9.05 and 19.91 minutes faster than women in the 2012 Cherry Blossom Run.
    • We are 99% confident that the true difference in the average run times between men and women is between 7.33 and 21.63 minutes.

  • The Exponential Distribution

    • It is given that µ = 4 minutes.
    • Find the probability that a clerk spends four to five minutes with a randomly selected customer.
    • The probability that a postal clerk spends four to five minutes with a randomly selected customer is
    • P(x < k) = 0.50, k = 2.8 minutes (calculator or computer)
    • The theoretical mean is 4 minutes.

  • Homework

    • The time (in minutes) until the next bus departs a major bus depot follows a distribution with f (x) = 1 20 where x goes from 25 to 45 minutes.
    • Find the probability that the time is at most 30 minutes.
    • Find the probability that the time is more than 40 minutes given (or knowing that) it is at least 30 minutes.
    • Find the probability that the commuter waits between three and four minutes.
    • The probability of waiting more than 7 minutes given a person has waited more than 4 minutes is?

  • The Fine Art of Complaining

    • Four weeks ago you placed a call to the 800 phone number on Acme's website.
    • You waited 20 minutes.
    • After a 15-minute wait, a different associate told you there'd been a glitch in the company's new shipping and receiving software which had delayed a number of orders.
    • She indicated that her clients, mostly middle-class and upper-class men, were too embarrassed or frustrated or inarticulate to compose their own messages.

  • Optional Classroom Activity

    • From the class, create four groups of the same size as follows: men under 22, men at least 22, women under 22, women at least 22.
    • Run an ANOVA test to determine if the average number of states visited in the four groups are the same.