What Color Corresponds With Each Subject? 

Nuha Ansar

I asked 45 people what their opinions were on what color they thought matched with each of the main core subjects. Following this somewhat controversial topic, a lot of people seemed to be very definitive in their opinions. Many had thought that their answer was the only right one, and this seemed to stir a lot of chaos when interviewing people! 

Each person was asked the same question: “What color do you think is each subject?” Students were given the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple to choose from, and they were also given the subjects: math, ELA, science, and social studies to match them with. As you’ll see in the pie charts below, the majority of people agreed that math was red, ELA was blue, science was green, and social studies was yellow. 

When asking these people why they thought that, the majority of the answers were directed by how certain subjects made them feel, or what the contents of each subject were. Most of us can associate colors with feelings or specific things, which is probably why this was the case. For example, when someone was asked why they thought math was red, they responded with, “Well math makes me mad, so math is red.” Similar to this response, when a different person was asked why they thought ELA was blue, they said, “ELA is kind of calming because of all the reading, so blue just fits that.” When yet another person was asked why they thought science was green, they said “Science kind of has to do with life and nature? And on TV all the chemicals they mix up in beakers in chemistry class are always green, if that makes any sense.” In contrast to some of these statements, someone had given a reason as to why they thought math was blue. “In math, you are doing a lot of computing, and if computers were a color, they’d be blue.”

Below are the results of what most people thought, but there were always some outliers and conflicting answers. All in all, people had various standpoints on what they thought, but it seems as though the people will never come to a solidified agreement!