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EXTRA CREDIT OPPORTUNITY—DEBATING WITH DATA One of the most common uses of data is arguing with it

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EXTRA CREDIT OPPORTUNITY—DEBATING WITH DATA One of the most common uses of data is arguing with it. You might have a feeling about something, like feeling that more people probably watch football than basketball on the TV. In order to find out if you’re right, you have to find the data. Now, that example can be researched to come up with a pretty simple answer. But what if you had a feeling that children from Japan had better social skills than children from the United States? There isn’t a measure of social skills that the whole world can agree on, so you can’t just test millions of Japanese and American children and make a valid conclusion on your opinion. Instead, you’ll have to find data and argue about why it’s important and why it supports your point. Maybe you’ll find that only 3% of Japanese children get placed in disciplinary programs at school, while 8% of American children get placed in such programs. That data would support your argument even though not everyone will accept your position. Another interesting thing about using data to argue your point is that on the other side of the argument there are people using data as well. A good example of this is gun control. One side can argue for stricter gun laws by talking about how many mass shootings there have been in recent years, but the other side can fight back by talking about how an overwhelming majority of gun owners have no violent crime history, so there’s no need to limit their access to guns. For this assignment, you will need to create TWO arguments. You will need to write about a page (it can be double-spaced, don’t worry) that takes the AGREE side of the statement, AND you will need to write about a page that takes the DISAGREE side of the statement. In effect, you will have to argue with yourself. Obviously, since this is a statistics class, you will need to include data and cite sources to show that you really researched this. A simple internet search should give you some links to articles that include data; it probably won’t be as hard as you think. And now, here is the statement that you will need to write an AGREE argument and a DISAGREE argument for: “Football and basketball programs are taking unfair advantage of minority youth.” Here’s how you will be graded: 50% of the grade is based on your use of data 25% of the grade is based on the completeness of your argument 25% of the grade is based on your basic writing skills (grammar, punctuation etc.)