Cases and QR

• Consult with reference librarians. They can help you find data to fill out a case or to accompany other sources you have put together.
• Allow students to avoid numbers. Part of what we want to teach students is to actively seek out quantitative information--or at least consider doing so. They lose the chance to make that choice if we force them to do so. If you provide a good number of sources, only some of which contain quantitative information, students can make a decision on their own. Then you might lead a discussion on what evidence participants found most persuasive and why.
• Consider introducing information from sources which are not entirely credible. These may include letters to the editor with quantitative claims, partisan reports, or studies funded by vested corporations.
• Introduce anecdotal evidence. Let students grapple with proper and improper uses of potentially unrepresentative information.
• Encourage estimation. Exactitude is over-rated. Give them incomplete information, perhaps just as the class begins, forcing them to roughly calculate the figure that is really useful.
• Include variables with contentious definitions or measurement methods.
• Introduce data that point to a correlation and force them to consider whether the relationship is really causal.
• Introduce results that are statistically significant, but which lack practical significance.