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This example focuses on six letters to the editor. All six letters attempt to describe and compare the amount of taxes paid on two different incomes: $30,000 and $200,000. Tax rates are expressed in absolute dollars, tax per $1,000 of income, $1 of tax per income amount, and as percents of annual income. Students need to be able to organize the relevant information and convert each stated tax rate to a standard form to help make comparisons. Additionally, students need to be aware that letter writers may make their own mistakes!
- Subject:
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Science and Technology
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
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Starting Point (SERC)
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This assignment exposes students to data on economic growth and development as commonly measured by per capita GDP and the Human Development Index (HDI) for 100 countries of the world. There is a big debate about how good an indicator HDI is compared to GDP per capita as a measure of development.
- Subject:
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Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
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Quantitative Writing (SERC)
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In this example students examine and critique an argument which implies that it is not cost effective to pay for an automobile with increased fuel efficiency. Using a few reasonable assumptions shows that some of the writer's quantitative claims are not very accurate.
- Subject:
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Mathematics and Statistics,
Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
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Starting Point (SERC)
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This assignment asks students to write a data-rich policy brief, showing their ability to apply standard microeconomic models and contextualizing the policy debate with numeric evidence.
- Subject:
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Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
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Quantitative Writing (SERC)
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In this assignment, a group of four to five students will select one country that has been ranked in the World Development Indicators of the World Bank, the Human Development Indicators of the United Nations Development Program, and the Happy Planet Indicator of the New Economic Foundation. Using the selected country's political, social, and economic statistics, each group will assess the methodology and validity of the measurements of WDI, HDI, and HPI indicators for the country. Students will compare and contrast the measurement methods, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each indicator, and propose recommendations to improve these indicators.
- Subject:
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Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
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Quantitative Writing (SERC)
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This assignment teaches students how to evaluate arguments concerning the maldistribution of environmental hazards, based on complex quantitative data.
- Subject:
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Science and Technology,
Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
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Quantitative Writing (SERC)
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Perhaps the first skill needed for successful quantitative reasoning is the ability to understand a single number. Newspaper headlines over the last year have used some amazingly large figures when discussing the national debt, bailout funds, corporate bonuses, or economic stimulus packages. Millions, billions, and trillions of dollars are often encountered in such stories. The ability to process these large values and compare their relative values is essential in understanding the financial nuances to such articles. This example contains two in-depth approaches to understanding large quantities.
- Subject:
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Mathematics and Statistics,
Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
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Starting Point (SERC)
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This activity is a mini-research project in which students independently investigate the variety of natural resources mined from the Earth and the broader implications of this mining. Students then give very short presentations of their findings to the class as a whole.
- Subject:
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Science and Technology
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
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Starting Point (SERC)
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" This course develops logical, empirically based arguments using statistical techniques and analytic methods. Elementary statistics, probability, and other types of quantitative reasoning useful for description, estimation, comparison, and explanation are covered. Emphasis is on the use and limitations of analytical techniques in planning practice."
- Subject:
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Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
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MIT OpenCourseWare
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Advertisers constantly thrust quantitative information in our face. Product claims, store enticements, health benefits, and scores of other contexts use short quantitative arguments to catch a reader's eye (and possibly money). This example shows how one can use these ads to bring added content to a quantitative reasoning course.
- Subject:
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Mathematics and Statistics,
Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
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Starting Point (SERC)
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This assignment asks students in a Quantitative Literacy foundations course to summarize data by using graphs they create in an Excel spreadsheet. Working in pairs, students are to work on part I of the assignment by completing the following: 1) create an AIDS chart from the given data, 2) determine the mean and median of the data, and 3) summarize the information by identifying statistical trends. Once each pair of students completes part I they have to complete part II by doing the following: 1) create a Poverty by Race Chart from given data, 2) determine statistical trends from the data, 3) find percent increase/decrease the data represents, and 4) determine what type of graph they could use to display percent data and explain their choice.
- Subject:
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Mathematics and Statistics,
Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
-
Quantitative Writing (SERC)
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This assignment is based on two graphs that appeared in the New York Times on April 7, 1995. The graphs provide "Republican" and "Democratic" views of a proposed tax cut. The graphs each measure the percent of "something" and in the assignment, students will compare the two graphs and determine whether both graphs are valid representations of the proposed tax cut.
- Subject:
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Mathematics and Statistics,
Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
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Post-secondary
- Collection:
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Quantitative Writing (SERC)
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This opening assignment for an introductory quantitative reasoning course asks students to write about "Numbers We Should Know." Its goal is to help students begin to think quantitatively, evaluate the sources of quantitative information critically, and write using numbers precisely and thoughtfully.
- Subject:
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Mathematics and Statistics,
Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
-
Post-secondary
- Collection:
-
Quantitative Writing (SERC)
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