Advanced Placement Statistics is not at all what I thought it would be and given that math is never my strongest skill, the presentation of a project by a group of Tahoma High students left me impressed, but also a little dizzy at the formulas.
This group — Donica Delia, Sarah Herman, Shanan Hopp and Marcelle Verkruse — met with me earlier this spring as part of a final project for Dave Wright’s AP Statistics class. Wright sent me a message in April asking if the staff at the Reporter had any questions the students could investigate. Given the phenomenal growth in Maple Valley in the past decade or so, I thought it would be interesting to see if there was any impact on voting patterns.
I also asked if they could check out patterns in Covington, but, I think that made the project too broad for them. Instead, they focused on Maple Valley, and it was quite well done. The quartet brought me a lovely printed report with graphs, scary looking — to me, at least — math formulas and well-composed summaries of the conclusions of the varying tests they did to investigate my question. They also put together an awesome Power Point presentation replete with excellent graphics, much of the same information as the printed report, as well as the scary math, which in the end left me feeling a bit fuzzy.
On the other hand, it was kind of like an episode of Mythbusters, except with more math than explosions. The group did a series of tests, confirmed their results before moving on to the next test, then drew conclusions based on the data they collected.
What impressed me most, though, was the fact they went to QFC in Maple Valley and the King County Library branch off Witte Road, then asked every third adult walking into either building to take the survey. I know that’s not easy. Years ago when I was a student at the University of Washington, I worked for the Eastside Journal as a news clerk, and for six months I had to do a man-on-the-street question every week. This was a small feature which I believe ran in the opinion section, so, it typically was a question about some kind of hot-button topic at the time. Now, people are always willing to share their opinions, but the kicker was I also had to take a headshot photo of everyone I interviewed. It could take up to two hours at times to get four responses as required to fill the space. I hated it and I was getting paid to do it. One of my favorite places to do this was outside of the Bellevue Regional Library. So, I know exactly what the students were talking about when people declined to take the survey for all sorts of reasons including they didn’t want to talk about politics.
Still, Delia, Herman, Hopp and Verkruyse surveyed a significant number of people over the course of a few weeks in May. They asked them who they voted for in the past three presidential elections. They also asked how long they lived in Maple Valley to see if newer residents tended to vote for Democrats more than residents who have lived here for nine years or longer.
Now, their initial data showed that hypothesis of mine regarding newer residents might be true, but what surprised me is their data also indicated Maple Valley does not skew as conservatively as I thought and may even be evenly split down the middle. For anyone who followed the legislative elections in 2012, this would explain some things.
But, the group determined they just didn’t have enough data to make any definitive conclusions. So, when the Mythbusters can’t conclusively confirm or bust a myth, they say it’s plausible. And, so, my hypothesis about voting patterns is plausible based on what the students determined through their data collection but they would need to collect more data to either confirm or bust my theory.
I asked them if given more time, would they be interested in pursuing the question to a point where they could gather enough data and perhaps even tweak their methodology to confirm or bust my theory, and they said they would. Unfortunately for me they graduate Tuesday so, this is where the investigation needs to stop.
Ultimately, it was clear this group of students were able to take everything they learned during the course of the school to do work relevant to a real-work situation — voting patterns are a critical part of understanding how elections turn out as a journalist because we often need to analyze results, especially in situations when certain candidates lose or certain measures fail — which also required them to go well beyond the classroom walls to get the work done. It required interacting with the public, working with someone in the community they could consider a client, presenting results to me as well as a panel of judges and demonstrating a level of higher order thinking skills that will serve them well not just in college but throughout the rest of their lives.
If it were up to me, I’d give them an A on the project. But, that may just be due to the fact all those equations made me feel a little light-headed.
