I use this when introducing the availability heuristic in Intro and Social (good ol' comparison of fatal airline accidents vs. fatal car crashes), but I think it could also be used in a statistics class. For starters, it is a novel way of illustrating data. Second, you could use it to spark a discussion on the importance of data-driven decision making when it comes to public policy/charitable giving. For instance, breast cancer has really good PR, but more women are dying of cardiovascular disease...where should the NSF concentrate its efforts to make the biggest possible impact? Property of Newsweek More of same from Curiosity.com... curiosity.com  https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bur_W0hCMAAOidE.png

This exercise encourages students to think critically about the statistics that they encounter in the media.  Note: This data is about abortion. When I use this exercise, I stress to my students that the exercise isn't about being pro-choice or anti-abortion, it is about being anti-bad statistics. Writer Sarah Kliff published an  article in Newsweek about de-stigmatizing abortion. In the article, she makes the claim that 40% of American women have had abortions. Some readers questioned this estimate. This is her reply to those readers. I challenge my students to find flaws or possible flaws/points of concern in the mathematics behind the 40% estimate. Some points that they come up with: a) The data doesn't include minors, b) the data doesn't include women who were alive between 1973 (Row v. Wade) and 2004 and but died/moved out of the US before the 2005 census data (which was used in her calculations), c) data estimates that about half of women having an abortion at...