1.4 Planning a statistical project
The planning stage is key to ensuring the data collection exercise goes smoothly. For instance, if a common format for the data is not decided at the outset, different researchers might collect the data differently. In the previous play park example, age could be part of the required data. The researcher could collect date of birth, age in years or the age category in which a person puts themself: thisis something which will need to be decided in advance to ensure usable data is collected.
Just like us, pupils in the classroom want to get to the ‘fun’ bit of presenting the data in nice graphs and finding the ‘answer’ to the problem so it can be difficult to convince them of the importance of planning. If you are working in a classroom situation, the following box contains an idea for use with your pupils to help them recognise the importance of planning.
Observation quiz
To help illustrate the importance of planning try the following with your class.
Play a three-minute cartoon clip asking pupils to make a note of everything they see ready for an observation quiz after the cartoon. After watching the clip, ask five questions based around a theme such as colour, e.g. What colour hair did the clown have? Which objects were red? Which colour was used more than all others?
Ask the pupils what it would have been helpful to know prior to watching the cartoon. Elicit the fact that if they had known all the questions were about colours, they could have focused on that aspect when observing and perhaps then been more successful in the quiz.
There are also discussions to be had about how to capture the information in an organised way that could make it more easily accessible when needed.
With some further thought, this task could be developed into a statistical project to answer a question such as ‘Do writers of cartoons use primary colours to engage a younger audience?’ which could be relevant to topics studied in English, art, media or graphic design.