News Presentation Project

Paper and presentation due by October 28th.

We see numbers in the news all the time, but what do they mean? How much should we trust what they seem to say?  You will be researching a relevant statistical story in the news and presenting to the class what they have discovered in their article or research and create discussion in the class.

One or two people will be assigned to each group. Each team will give a presentation on their topic.
The necessary components of the presentation are as follows:

I. Find a current article, either in print or online, that uses statistics or reports statistics or statistics in action.  For our purposes, “current” is within the past 12 months unless otherwise pre-approved.  You will submit a printed version of the article with your assignment. *MAKE SURE YOUR TOPIC AND ARTICLE ARE APPROVED or you will not receive credit.

Write no more than two typed pages that does the following:
 
II. Introduce the article:  Identify the article’s source, headline, date, and the name of its author (the reporter) and a topic sentence explaining your reason for choosing this article. 

III. Summarize the article:  Concisely identify and explain the major points of article.  Identify and explain the implied or direct mathematics of the article. 

IV. Make statistical connections:  Relate the information to one of the course topics.  Consider the bias of the article.  Explain in what ways the uses of statistics are appropriate or not.

Incorporate this information into a short presentation and present in class.
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V. Class Presentation: Each team will present using PowerPoint or Google Slides for 3-5 minutes, where they will describe the relevant statistical topics. There will then be a 2 minute question and answer period. During this time, team members should use their exemplar article to clarify the concepts or follow-up on questions not answerable during the presentation.

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Here are some examples of articles and data available for this project.

​FBI
-https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/latest-crime-statistics-released
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​Bureau of Labor Statistics
-http://www.bls.gov/bls/newsrels.htm

U.S. News & World Report
-http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-10-12/americans-quitting-their-jobs-en-masse-says-bureau-of-labor-statistics

Science Daily
-https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/computers_math/statistics/

New York Times
-http://www.nytimes.com/section/upshot
-http://www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/bureau-of-labor-statistics

Los Angeles Times
-http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/statistics
-http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/health-statistics
-http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/sports-statistics
-http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/education-statistics

This is Statistics
-http://thisisstatistics.org/latest-news/

Huffington Post
-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/statistics/

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