Creating and Reading Two-Way Tables - Pendulum and Sobriety Testing
This material was developed as part of the Carleton Teaching Activity Collection and is replicated on a number of sites
as part of the
SERC Pedagogic Service Project
Initial Publication Date: June 24, 2010
Summary
In this activity, the students create a two-way table through a class activity. At the beginning of class, the instructor distributes "Yes (almost to 1/3 of class)" and "No" cards to class participants. Depending on the card student receives, he/she will be assumed to be using alcohol or not. Then, the students have to go through a "pendulum testing" to decide "scientifically" if they use alcohol or not. After the result of testing, the students organize the data as a two-way table.
Learning Goals
Creating and reading two-way tables
Conditional and marginal distributions
Conditional and marginal distributions
Context for Use
This activity is designed for an introductory statistics course. It can be used in an introductory sociology, psychology, liberal arts math clas, quantitative literacy project. I used pendulums to conduct the "scientific test" but other methods can easily be used to do this test. This activity can easily be adapted to be used in other settings.
Description and Teaching Materials
Teaching Notes and Tips
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Assessment
The use of Pre and post tests. Please see the attached file titled "Creating and Reading Two-Way tables pretest".