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(This article was first published on <strong><a href="https://fronkonstin.com/2018/05/15/the-pleasing-ratio-project/"> R – Fronkonstin</a></strong>, and kindly contributed to <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.r-bloggers.com/">R-bloggers)</a> </div>
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<blockquote>
<p>Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand (Sir Duke, Stevie Wonder)</p>
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<p><img data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/fronkonstin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Gustav_Fechner.jpg?fit=774%2C1100&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="774,1100" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/fronkonstin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Gustav_Fechner.jpg?fit=211%2C300&amp;ssl=1" data-attachment-id="4501" data-image-meta="{" data-image-description="" src="https://i0.wp.com/fronkonstin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Gustav_Fechner.jpg?resize=211%2C300&ssl=1" data-permalink="https://fronkonstin.com/2018/05/15/the-pleasing-ratio-project/gustav_fechner/" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/fronkonstin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Gustav_Fechner.jpg?fit=604%2C858&amp;ssl=1" alt="" data-image-title="Gustav_Fechner" sizes="(max-width: 211px) 100vw, 211px" width="211" data-comments-opened="1" class="wp-image-4501" data-recalc-dims="1" height="300"></p>
<p>This serious man on the left is Gustav Theodor Fechner, a German philosopher, physicist and experimental psychologist who lived between 1801 and 1887. To be honest, I don’t know almost anything of his life or work exepct one thing: he did in the 1860s a <em>thought-provoking</em> experiment. It seems me interesting for two important reasons: he called into question something widely established and obtained experimental data by himself.</p>
<p>Fechner’s experiment was simple: he presented just ten rectangles to 82 students. Then he asked each of them to choose the most pleasing one and obtained revealing discoveries I will not explain here since would cause <em>bias</em> in my experiment. You can find more information about the original experiment <a rel="nofollow" href="https://plus.maths.org/content/golden-ratio-and-aesthetics" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>I have done a project inspired in Fechner’s one that I called <em>The Pleasing Ratio Project</em>. Once you enter in the App, you will see two rectangles. Both of them have the same area. They only vary in their <em>length-to-width</em> ratios. Then you will be asked to select the one that seems you most pleasing. If you have doubts, just choose <em>I’m not sure</em>. You can do it as many times as you want (all responses are completely anonymous). Every <em>game</em> will confront a couple of ratios, which can vary from 1 to 3,5. In the <em>Results</em> section you will find the  percentage of winning games for each ratio. The one with the highest percentage will be named officially as <em>The Most Pleasing Ratio of the World</em> in the future by myself.</p>
<p>Although my experiment is absolutely inspired in Fechner’s one, there are some differences. I can explore a bigger set of ratios doing an A/B test and I also introduce the option <em>I’m not sure</em>. This makes this one a bit richer.</p>
<p>The experiment has also some interesting technical features:</p>
<ul>
<li>the use of <code>shinydashboard</code> package to arrange the App</li>
<li>the use of <code>shinyjs</code> package to add javaScript to refresh the page when use choose to play again</li>
<li>to save votes in a text file</li>
<li>to read it to visualize results</li>
</ul>
<p>Will I obtain the same results as Fechner? This is a living project whose results will change over the time so you can check it regularly.<br>
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://91.134.134.147:3838/pleasing-ratio-project/" target="_blank"><br>
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</a><br>
The code of the project is available in <a rel="nofollow" href="https://github.com/aschinchon/pleasing-ratio-project" target="_blank">GitHub</a>. Thanks a lot for your collaboration!</p>
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