How to analyze reaction time and slicing accuracy data from a simple game like Slice Master in MATLAB?

Hi everyone, I’ve been experimenting with a reflex-based game called Slice Master to study human reaction times and precision. I can export gameplay logs that include timestamps for each slice, slice angle, and whether the slice was “perfect” or not.

My goal is to import this data into MATLAB and:

1. Compute reaction times between successive slices.
2. Plot a histogram of slice-to-slice reaction times.
3. Analyze the distribution of slice angles (e.g., deviation from ideal).
4. Identify “runs” of perfect slices (longest streak, average streak length).
5. Possibly apply a smoothing filter or clustering to reaction times to detect outliers or performance shifts.

What MATLAB functions / toolboxes would you recommend for these tasks? And what is the best way to structure this kind of gameplay data for analysis (e.g., timetable, table, struct)? Any example code snippets or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

[Taylor]

You shouldn't need any specific toolboxes to do this sort of analysis. Timetables are best for continuous time-series data, though you can add discrete events to them. I would probably just organize the data in a standard table with a variable for "time of event" and other things like "angle of slice".