Discussion 1:
Discuss whether you agree or disagree with the ideas presented by Nicholas Kristof and Jaweed Kaleem
on the value of the humanities. Explain why or why not. Then, review the article Extraordinary
Outsiders: The Makers Who Don’t Know They’re Artists. Do you think the creative process is good for
the average person? Explain why or why not.
Discussion 2:
In real-life applications, statistics helps us analyze data to extract information about a population. In this
module discussion, you will take on the role of Susan, a high school principal. She is planning on having a
large movie night for the high school. She has received a lot of feedback on which movie to show and
sees differences in movie preferences by gender and also by grade level.
She knows if the wrong movie is shown, it could reduce event turnout by 50%. She would like to
maximize the number of students who attend and would like to select a PG-rated movie based on the
overall student population’s movie preferences. Each student is assigned a classroom with other
students in their grade. She has a spreadsheet that lists the names of each student, their classroom, and
their grade. Susan knows a simple random sample would provide a good representation of the
population of students at their high school, but wonders if a different method would be better.
In your initial discussion post, specifically address the following:
describe a time when you used data in a personal or professional decision. This could be
anything from analyzing sales data on the job to making an informed purchasing decision about
a home or car.
Describe an example of a sample of this student population that would not represent the
population well.
Describe another example of a sample that would represent the population well.
Finally, describe the relationship of a sample to a population and classify your two samples as
random, cluster, stratified, or convenience.
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