Session 4: Practice Activities
Time to Practice!
6 activities to reinforce what you learned. Try them all!
Difficulty levels: Easy Medium Challenge
1 Sampling Strategy Design Easy Activity
Design a sampling strategy to answer: 'What is the favorite lunch of students at your school?' Describe who you would ask, how many, and how you would select them.
2 Bias Identifier Easy Discussion
Identify the bias in each scenario: (1) Surveying about school lunch by asking only kids in the cafeteria, (2) An online poll about exercise, (3) Asking your 5 best friends their favorite subject.
3 Sampling Experiment Medium Activity
Put 50 colored objects in a bag (known quantities). Draw samples of 5, 10, and 25 (replacing each time). How close does each sample get to the true proportions? What does this teach about sample size?
4 Survey Evaluator Medium Research
Find 3 real polls or surveys online. For each, answer: How many people? How selected? Any obvious bias? Do you trust the results? Rate each 1-5 for quality.
5 Design Two Surveys Medium Activity
Write the same research question but design two different sampling strategies — one biased and one representative. Predict how the results would differ and explain why.
6 The Survivorship Bias Project Challenge Critical Thinking
Research a real-world example of survivorship bias (successful entrepreneurs, WWII airplane armor, college dropout billionaires). Explain: what are we seeing? What are we NOT seeing? How does this distort our understanding?