débats A suggested pop quizz guideline

harold posted on Apr 11, 2011 at 08:00PM
It's an issue all over Fanpop, but I see it most here in the Debate club: pop quiz questions are asked that are based on a specific set of changeable statistics but are phrased in a way that suggests an absolute answer. An hypothetical example:

What percentage of women serve as corporate CEOs in the United States, according to the World Women's Way?

Astute readers will see problems with this question, because the answer will change depending on when you're sampling the data. In the example, the World Women's Way may generate reports on female representation in the workplace every year, and it is not a static number. Even if there was only one such report when the question was written, it is the nature of such studies that they get repeated over time. Three years from now, another report might be produced which has wholly different numbers. Either the correct answer changes from one pop quiz answer to another, or all of the answers become wrong, and the question then needs to be reported as inaccurate.

Does this mean that we can't ask questions involving statistics? Not at all! Such questions are great tests of your fellow fans' knowledge, but they need to have a specific reference. In the hypothetical example, the following would be specific enough:

In 2007, what percentage of women served as corporate CEOs in the United States, according to the World Women's Way?

This wouldn't be specific enough, of course, if there were multiple reports from the World Women's Way in 2007. That could be addressed in one of two ways:

Solution A: In 2007, what percentage of women served as corporate CEOs in the United States, according to the World Women's Way report from November 2008?

or

Solution B: Which of these percentages correspond to a percentage of women serving as corporate CEOs in 2007, as reported by the World Women's Way?

Solution B is more elegant, and more challenging at the same time, particularly if there were multiple reports produced for 2007 statistics by the World Women's Way.

Of course, it is also a general courtesy across Fanpop that materials used to create the quiz questions are actually available, linked in the club where the quiz question appears.

débats 2 réponses

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il y a plus d’un an pandawinx said…
true, but that could easily be sorted by saying: "In (insert year the expirement was carried out)" before the question.
il y a plus d’un an harold said…
I'm glad you agree.