Week 12 Discussion — Delegate or Trustee? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

A poll can tell a representative what people said. It cannot tell the representative what to do. This week you learned how to judge whether a poll can speak for a whole population, and that skill matters most when a representative has to decide how much a poll should count.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: A council member in a made-up town reads a random-sample poll of residents, with its sample size, field dates, method, and stated margin all reported, showing that most residents oppose a new bus depot. The member believes the depot is needed. Take a position: should the member act as a delegate and vote with the poll, or as a trustee and vote on their own judgment? Use at least one of this week's tools (the four facts, or the difference between the margin of error and total error) to say how much weight the poll deserves, and state at full strength the strongest case for the view you reject.

Option B: A legislator in a made-up country receives thousands of messages urging a no vote on a bill, while a random-sample poll of the whole district shows a slim majority in favor. Take a position: when what people say and what the representative judges best pull apart, should a representative act as a delegate or as a trustee? Use the difference between a self-selected sample and a random sample to explain how much the messages and the poll should each count, label which of your premises is empirical and which is normative, and state the strongest case for the other view as its defenders would put it.

There is no single right answer. Thoughtful people defend the delegate view and thoughtful people defend the trustee view; your job is to argue your side well and to state the other side fairly.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• State your position in one clear sentence: delegate or trustee.
• For Option A, use the four facts or the difference between the margin of error and total error to say how much weight the poll deserves. For Option B, explain why the messages are a self-selected sample and what the random-sample poll can and cannot tell the legislator.
• Give at least one reason, and label each premise you rely on as empirical or normative.
• State the strongest case for the other view, as its own defenders would put it, before you answer it.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (random sample, self-selected sample, margin of error, total error, question wording, non-response, delegate, trustee) correctly.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: check whether a poster asked how a sample was drawn before weighing it, test whether a premise labelled empirical could really be checked, or state the view the poster did not take at its strongest. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option B, and I argue the legislator should act more as a trustee on this bill. The messages come from people who chose to write, so they are a self-selected sample, and their number cannot tell the legislator what the whole district thinks. My premise that the messages carry no margin of error is empirical, a fact about how they were gathered. My premise that a representative should weigh the whole district and not only the loudest part of it is normative. The strongest case against me is that representation means following the represented, and a slim poll majority is still what the district said.

Notice how it takes a side, judges each source by how its sample was drawn, labels each premise by kind, and states the other side fairly before answering it. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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