Activity 1: Polling As An Experiential Entry Point
A straw poll, an unofficial vote that is taken to discover what people think about an idea or problem, can provide a false presentation of public opinion as its administration does not require appropriate sampling. Straw polls, however, can help groups reach consensus and provide an entry point for students to become interested in the process of collecting data, especially when the polling is connected to a community concern or belief. To this end, students will be tasked with collecting community opinion data about teen takeovers and Marrion Barry’s famed legacy in DC. The collection of shared data as a class serves to create a shared physical experience upon which to build the learning. While the experience won’t take place in a field trip setting, as Moses espoused, through the investigative survey process, students will carry their learning from the classroom to the community and back again. In learning to interpret and represent the data, they will connect their learning to the value of community voice and will be empowered with the skills to amplify it.
Students will need to discover how to develop a specific investigative question. Through think-alouds, the teacher should guide students to refine their questions from general to specific. Students should consider: What questions could be posed other than what’s your opinion about teen takeovers? or how do you feel about Marrion Barry?”
After giving students time in groups of 3-4 to create a list of questions (general and specific), the teacher should collect and display the list of questions. Some students might draft questions asking:
Do you think teen takeovers are violent? Why do you think teen takeovers are happening? How should teen takeovers be stopped? Do you like Marrion Barry? Did you vote for him? How many times did you vote for him? Do you agree that Marrion Barry deserved the title “mayor for life?” Why do you think he deserved that title?
Students will consider whether the answer to the questions listed will provide enough information to answer our query about community belief and concerns. Will a yes or no question provide the data you are looking for as a surveyor? Students should discuss reasons why they would prefer to ask one question over another?
The teacher should clarify that a question is statistical if it is written to expect variability among the answers. Students with mathematics difficulty benefit from explicit vocabulary instruction with the inclusion of nonexamples to combat overgeneralization.[24] Vocabulary introduced throughout the unit should be added to a visual lasting display in the classroom and referenced by the teacher when revoicing less formal or intuitive language student responses. To address an overgeneralization of variability, the teacher can highlight the following nonexample. While the question “Was Marrion Barry ever the mayor of DC?” could result in more than one answer—a person could say no out of their ignorance of the fact—the question is not statistical because there is an invariable correct answer to the question.
In groups, students will consider which questions in the list may result in more variability than others. They will also consider whether asking the question they identified as their preference in the last discussion will result in higher or lower variability of data. They may make a connection between their reasons for selecting a question and their new understanding of variability.
To contribute to the creation of a shared experience and to implement consensus-building community organizing principles, the teacher will poll students to determine 2-4 questions to be asked by all students. At minimum, one (1) open-ended question about each topic should be selected. Two additional yes/no questions may be added to the survey. So, the teacher must be sure to poll and tally votes accordingly. Students should be reminded to collect demographic information from their participant, including age, gender, and race.
The teacher will task each student to collect survey data from at least one person and bring their results to the next class. Students will likely collect data from their friends, family, and neighbors. In analyzing the data, they should consider whether this method of polling provides an adequate sample of the community’s opinions about the subjects. Here, students have an opportunity to derive the meaning of a population and sample. Students will need to narrow down categories until they get to the most appropriate description for their shared participants. Narrowing down from DC parents to Southeast parents to Ward 8 parents to parents of Johnson Middle School students and so on.
Literary Digest famously published the results of a straw poll inaccurately predicting victory for Alf Landon in the presidential election of 1936; meanwhile polls utilizing random sampling correctly predicted that Franklin Delano Roosevelt would be victorious. The success of the random sampling polls led to the notoriety of pioneers, Crossley, Gallup, and Elmo Roper as they developed the science of opinion polling from market research methods.[25]
Students will consider the limitations of the ways in which they collected data and ascertain a reason for a more scientific way of sampling. Would the sampling be more scientific if the participants were randomly selected? Further, students will consider the difference between qualitative and quantitative data. They will then be tasked with considering how to represent qualitative data in a quantitative manner. For instance, creating categories based on responses and determining what percentage of responses fall under each category. Students may determine the need for refining their question, providing multiple choice or check all that apply options based on the categories they uncovered from their qualitative results. In refining their survey questions, students should include questions that request numerical data about community engagement, for example: How much time per week do you spend consuming local news? How many parent-teacher conferences have you attended in the past 2 years? How many local council meetings have you attended in the past 10 years?
The multiple data points collected during this shared polling experience should be used throughout the unit to model the various ways numerical and categorical data can be represented visually. We will refer to our amassed collection as the Shared Experience Data Bank (SEBD). Using our SEDB, the class will learn to create a five-number summary for numerical data and create representative box plots. They will be able to make conclusions about data using statistical language. Saying for instance: The median amount of time per week consuming data was 62 minutes. The shared experience provides context and grounding for students as they learn new information.
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