Topic Exploration Pack
Fallacies in Statistic
Activity Sheet 1
A crime was committed in the early hours of Saturday 4th April in Metropolis. Two different
witnesses saw a man steal a maths protractor/calculator set from the marketplace. The thief
dropped their local college timetable which was found by the police.
Day/Period
Monday
1
Quantitative
Reasoning
2
3
4
ICT
Chemistry
FREE
FREE
FREE
Chemistry
Art
ICT
Tuesday
Art
Wednesday
FREE
Thursday
FREE
ICT
Friday
Chemistry
FREE
Quantitative
Reasoning
FREE
Quantitative
Reasoning
Art
FREE
The next morning a man was caught matching the description entirely. There was no forensic
evidence available as the perpetrator had been wearing gloves and the timetable was
laminated. It was noted that the timetable was one for a local college and it is unknown which
college in the city it is from. A list of subjects taken at the local colleges with numbers on roll
was also obtained by the police to aid with the investigation.
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1
Your Task
Based on the theoretical probabilities of the people in the room your job is to form a statistical argument
for the prosecution team and the defence team to illustrate the Prosecutor’s Fallacy. The student
population of the city is approximately 1 million. Present your argument in the form of a poster showing
both arguments.
Version 1
Subject
No. of Students
Maths
63
Chemistry
46
Biology
52
Psychology
82
Physics
32
English Language
69
English Literature
63
History
23
Geography
21
RE
18
Government and Politics
17
Quantitative Reasoning
21
Art
25
Music
11
ICT
43
Computing
28
Photography
14
Law
18
Economics
32
Business Studies
38
2
Activity Sheet 3
Variable A
Variable B
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Height of a person
Intelligence (IQ)
Age
The number of times you are late
Time it takes to get to school
Number of goals scored in a season
Number of homework tasks completed
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
8
Amount of alcohol drunk
35
9
10
11
36
37
38
39
How 'happy' you feel
13
Test score at English
The amount of Big Macs bought
Amount of coffee drunk each day
Number of times you don't do
homework
Shoe size
Amount of fish eaten
The amount of exercise a person gets
The number of rats in the street
Number of times you vote on X factor
Sea levels each year
Amount of revision in hours
Salary for a year
Number of hours of sunlight a person
is exposed to
Number of days to Christmas
Number of words in your vocabulary
Chances of disease
40
14
How much of a football fan someone is
41
15
16
17
18
19
20
Number of grey hairs
Ability at Music
Distance from home to school
Average speed of a person over 100m
Number of friends on Facebook
Amount of water drunk each day
42
43
44
45
46
47
21
Number of mobile phones you have
48
22
Average weight of a person
49
23
Hours of sleep per night
50
24
25
26
27
Temperature of skin
Number of legs
Number of eyes
Number of books you own
51
52
53
54
Amount of work done
Amount of money spent in the
canteen each year
Number of cars you have
Amount of TV watched
Money spent each year
The number of friends you have
Number of girlfriends you have
Number of boyfriends you have
Amount of times being sent to
withdrawal
Number of detentions you get
The number of times you haven't
bought the correct equipment to
school
Number of holidays a year
How many hours you watch TV a day
How many computer games you have
Life expectancy
12
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3
Activity Sheet 4
Go onto the website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/reaction_version5.swf
to play the sheep dash game.
Play the game 3 times and record the average time in the table below (First Test). Calculate the average
of the three averages and record it in the total cell.
Repeat the experiment and record your outcomes again in the table below (Second test).
First Test
Go
1
2
3
Total
1
2
3
Total
Average
Class Average:
Worse 3 Averages:
Best 3 Averages:
Second Test
Go
Average
Class Average:
Worse 3 Averages:
Best 3 Averages:
What do you notice about the change in averages from the 1st to the 2nd test?
Version 1
4