Extra exercises for Chapter 9
Exercise 1: Murders by steam, hot vapours and hot objects
Jane is a US newspaper journalist writing in 2005. Her particular area is crime so she often browses the latest murder statistics. The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) keep a record of murders, categorised by the method the killer used. She notices that this year has seen the highest number of murders by “steam, hot vapours and hot objects” of any year on record. This year, so-called torture porn movies like Hostel and Saw 2 have also become increasingly popular. She thinks there might be a connection.
The CDC’s cause of death database is freely available online using the
CDC’s WONDER tool.
Examine the database. Is the article Jane is considering reasonable?
Exercise 2: Regrowing Arctic sea ice
Christopher Booker is a columnist for the British Daily Telegraph. In February 2008, he wrote a column in which he criticised journalists, climate scientists, and other ‘warmists’ for their announcement the previous autumn that Arctic sea ice had shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded:
“Sea ice cover had shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded. But for some reason the warmists are less keen on the latest satellite findings, reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the website Cryosphere Today by the University of Illinois.
This body is committed to warmist orthodoxy and contributes to the work of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet its graph of northern hemisphere sea ice area, which shows the ice shrinking from 13,000 million sq km to just 4 million from the start of 2007 to October, also shows it now almost back to 13 million sq km.”
A reproduction of the graph referred to in the quote is provided below:
Long-term data on the extent of northern hemisphere sea ice is available from the
NOAA website. A spreadsheet containing monthly sea ice figures from 1992 to 2017 is also available
here .
Based on this data, was Booker right to say that sea ice changes do not support the theory of global warming?
Exercise 3: Hiding the bad news
You are the headmaster of a local high school. Each year, you are required to release statistics on the percentage of students who have failed their final exams. You are headed to a meeting with the school governors where you will need to present this figure.
This year’s number, along with some potentially relevant context, is provided in a spreadsheet
here.
Design a PowerPoint slide that will make this year’s number look as small as possible.
