Slides for Day 12 in EWRT 2, Spr 18

1. EWRT 2
Day 13
STATISTICAL LITERACY

2. Some details about “work-to-contract.”
You can expect me to respond to email (or to be
available for in-person meetings):
◦ Mon, Tues, Thurs: 1:30-2:30 PM
◦ Wed: 8:30-9:30 AM
Other ways to get help:
◦ I will be available after class in the classroom until 1:15.
◦ Work time during class.
◦ Ask questions in your Discussion Posts or HW on Canvas
(which I can respond to while grading).
◦ Check out the “chat” app on Canvas. You can talk to other
students there.

3. Business / Participation
P2 was good! I enjoyed that. And I think you learned some
things.
EWRT Research Paper gets underway today:
◦ Journal 4 due on Wednesday. We will go over it in detail a bit
later today.
◦ Paper 3 assignment is posted. Will go over it on Wednesday.
◦ Unnatural Disasters OPTIONAL Project. Will discuss in a
moment.
Part of your CREM Integrated Project is due to Amanda at
the end of this week.
◦ Cannot collect this data until I approve HW 6.
◦ Some of you need to deal with that today.
Participation for today
◦ one individual, 1 group point from Fermi activity, group points
from library skills “scavenger hunt” (0-2 depending).

4. Unnatural Disasters OPTIONAL Project
Remember that talk about the Bay Area housing crisis we went to?
There is a second activity involved: a student-led teach-in.
I will be giving 10 discussion points for participation:
IF you want to focus your EWRT Research Paper on an issue that is
related to the housing crisis in the Bay Area
AND
You are willing to connect your paper project to some of your
classmates to create a brief (10-15 minute) lesson and activity about
what you’ve learned
AND
You can attend the Unnatural Disasters student teach-in on Friday,
June 15, from 10AM-12PM in the Conference Rooms.
Additional work this would involve:
◦ Meet with a group of your classmates
◦ Connect your research to theirs in ways that make sense
◦ Design a presentation or activity that educates other students about what
you’ve learned.
◦ Attend the event.
Your EWRT Research Paper is still, of course, your own work.
Potential topics for the paper that could be
relevant to this OPTIONAL project:
Gentrification
Eviction and the Ellis Act
Rent Control and Costa-Hawkins
Private vs. public housing
Living wage
AirBNB and other short-term rentals
Politics of NIMBY, YIMBY, etc.
Housing development
Silicon Valley growth and employment
Income inequality
Homelessness (causes and/or solutions)
If you are interested, please choose an
appropriate topic for Journal 4 and talk to
me in class on Wednesday.

5. Journal 4 and Library Skills II:
Handout and Activity
Journal 4 assignment is on Canvas.
Go over Library Skills II handout on Canvas.
NOW, using the “cheat sheet” I gave you today, I want you to
find relevant articles for a topic in groups of four. (Each group
should have access to a laptop.)
Your group needs to use the library databases to:
◦ Come up with your own keywords.
◦ Find three RELEVANT newspaper or magazine articles.
◦ Find three RELEVANT scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles.
Do this in 15 minutes to get 2 points for everyone in the group.
After 15 minutes (but before 20 minutes) everyone in the group
will receive 1 point. (The time it takes me to look at it counts.)
You claim your points by showing me a Works Cited with all six
articles on it. Use the database to make the citations for you.
Your Works Cited should be appropriately alphabetized.
TOPICS:

6. Journal 4 and Library Skills II:
Handout and Activity
Journal 4 assignment is on Canvas.
Go over Library Skills II handout on Canvas.
NOW, using the “cheat sheet” I gave you today, I want you to
find relevant articles for a topic in groups of four. (Each group
should have access to a laptop.)
Your group needs to use the library databases to:
◦ Come up with your own keywords.
◦ Find three RELEVANT newspaper or magazine articles.
◦ Find three RELEVANT scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles.
Do this in 15 minutes to get 2 points for everyone in the group.
After 15 minutes (but before 20 minutes) everyone in the group
will receive 1 point. (The time it takes me to look at it counts.)
You claim your points by showing me a Works Cited with all six
articles on it. Use the database to make the citations for you.
Your Works Cited should be appropriately alphabetized.
TOPICS:
Nuclear disarmament
Minimum wage
Animal testing
Bipolar disorder
Schizophrenia
Endangered species
California drought
Online privacy

7. Statistics and Interpretation
Levitin asserts that “statistics are
interpretations.” But what does he mean
here?
◦ does he mean the actual math is an
interpretation?
◦ are the calculations not objective?
Levitin (3): “People choose what to count, how
to go about counting, which of the resulting
numbers they will share with us, and which
words they will use to describe and interpret
those numbers.”
Example: Suppose I am interested in the link
between caffeine and anxiety and I want to do
a study and collect some statistics:
◦ what to count: say that I choose to count cups of
coffee as a measure of caffeine consumption.
How is that potentially an “interpretation”?
◦ how to go about counting: say that I ask people
to report how many cups of coffee they drank
this week and how anxious they felt (on a scale
of 1-5). How is this potentially an interpretation?
◦ which numbers to share: say that I report the
mean of 2.4 cups of coffee. How might this be an
interpretation?
◦ which words to use: say that I find say that I find
a strong correlation between coffee and anxiety
and I claim that “caffeine causes anxiety.” How is
this an interpretation?

8. How can we use our common sense and basic
math skills to come up with plausible estimates?

9. Fermi Estimates
Named after physicist Enrico Fermi, physicist on the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb).
“Quick and dirty” estimates.
Idea is not to get it perfect, but to get within a power of ten
(which isn’t incredibly close, but often close enough).
Combination of background knowledge and reasonable guesses.
I find that three pieces of information can often help with this:
◦ population of the world: 7.6 billion
◦ pop. of the US: 326 million
◦ pop. of California: 40 million
Practice makes these easier.

10. Fermi Estimate Practice Problems
In groups!
Five examples—some have a real answer, some don’t.
We’ll do two of them together. No internet allowed, but calculators
are okay.
If you want to look up a number, ask me.
1. How many miles does a person walk in a lifetime?
2. How many new passenger cars/trucks are sold each year in the
USA?
3. How much does California state government spend on K-12
education every year?
4. On average, how many people are airborne in commercial planes
over the US right now?
5. On any given day, how many people go surfing in California?

11. HW for Wednesday
There is a Discussion Post due by midnight
Tuesday (and a response the next morning).
Journal 4 is due before class on Wednesday.
There will be a NYT quiz (of course).
Get to work collecting your CREM Integrated
Project data (if I’ve approved your HW 6).
Participation for today
◦ one individual, 1 group point from Fermi activity,
group points from library skills “scavenger hunt”
(0-2 depending).