I am working on a science fair project about contagiousness in yawning. What would be a good and effective way to collect data?

Well, I don't know what's the best way to carry that out, but I would suggest forming a small group, and each of the members go to a different class to tally the number of yawns during a class. I know, that may make you lose time, but asking people how many times they yawned in one day is like asking them how many times they exhaled air from their lungs...

That sounds like a good idea but the point of the project is to see how contagious yawning is.I was going to witness one person yawning and then tally the amount of yawns after that. But how should I make a chart or graph out of this? Or should I just measure contagousness in a different way?

Well, I can suggest that you tally the number of consecutive yawns. You will then have several groups of yawns from that way. For example, you take separated tally for the 'alone yawns' where no consecutive yawns were made in an interval of ten minutes, then time groups of for example 1 minute consecutive yawns group, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, etc.

The 1 minutes consec. Group will have yawns that follow another yawn in the 1 minute, that makes two yawns in a minute. If another yawn is made in the 59th second, you sort of reset the 1 minute so that if an additional yawn is made after the last one is 30 seconds (total time 59s + 30s) later is still in the 1 minute group.

I hope it's clear enough. Then, you can plot a line chart, or even a pie chart to illustrate your statistics. Good luck with your work! :)

Thanks! That might work!