Starter Activity - Introducing Analysis

This is an activity which helps to teach students an aspect of analysis using some statistics that are likely to be very relevant to most - the percentage of different age groups who have a drivers license.

I start by showing them the graph below and ask them to try and observe some trends that are happening.

They point out that the trend is for a decreasing percentage of younger people to have a drivers license (up until about age 40 - still young in my book…) but for an increasing percentage of older people to have a drivers license.

I then get them into groups of two or three and ask them to think about three businesses that will be affected (either positively or negatively) by this change. The key thing that each group has to do when they report back is to say why the business will be affected and thus providing some analysis. As an example, a group might say that a bus company might be positively affected because less teenage drivers means that they will need other modes of transport to get around. The bus company will probably be affected more than a taxi company because teenagers tend not to be able to afford a taxi in most instances. That is good analysis!

I then tell them the reasons given by the authors of the study for why less teenagers are gaining their drivers license (which can be found here). Essentially, they are saying that driving gets in the way of use of the internet and social networking, as well as texting. I asked my students whether they agreed and I got a resounding NO! Give me some other analysis then I said…..and I got reasons such as the high cost of fuel and insurance, as well as tougher conditions to actually pass the license test. Which actually sounded a bit more plausible to me and I congratulated them on their ability to analyze better than the university professor involved in the study!