The Sound of Statistics: Can Sonified Data Elicit an Emotional Response?

Sonification, the use of sound to represent data, is a subject that has remained largely unexplored in the context of traditional data visualizations in recent years. However, given that sound through the form of music is able to elicit an emotional response from humans, it is worth exploring whether sonified data can evoke a similar emotional impact. In our study, we survey approximately two-hundred undergraduate students in introductory statistics courses to determine whether 1) simulated sonified data in the form of boxplots can elicit an emotional response from participants, 2) whether there is a relationship between the emotional response of sonified data and what modal chord the sonified data is played in, and 3) whether there is a difference in this relationship between data that is simulated versus real data with a context. Overall, this study seeks to determine whether the use of sonification as an alternative or complement to visualizations can foster a deeper, more intuitive connection to raw data.

Sonification

Modal chords

Statistical perception

Simulated data

Tonal perception 

Education

Symposium on Data Science and Statistics (SDSS) 2025