Week 2 — Whom Does the Number Speak For? A Short Data-Reading Report — Traditional alternative (no AI)

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

Assignment 2 of the term — read a real survey figure and two illustrative towns, work out what each number says, and explain to someone outside sociology what a figure can and cannot claim.

This week you learned how sociologists turn a hunch into a study, which research method fits which question, whom a sample can speak for, why a correlation is not a cause, and which protections every research participant is owed. Last week you learned to ask four questions of any statistic and to compare places by rate rather than count; this week shows where evidence comes from. In this assignment you work four short problems on a real survey figure and two illustrative towns, interpret each one, and explain a claim to someone who has never studied sociology. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Sociology in Action Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will use these figures, all from this week's chapter:

• Pew Research Center's Mobile Fact Sheet: in a 2025 survey of 5,022 U.S. adults, 91% said they own a smartphone and 98% said they own a cellphone of some kind. When Pew first measured smartphone ownership in 2011, 35% of U.S. adults owned one.
• Two illustrative towns built for this course (not real places): Town A records 12 events among 40,000 residents in one year, and Town B records 15 events among 30,000 residents in the same year.

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic:

1. Pew Research Center reports that 35% of U.S. adults owned a smartphone in 2011 and 91% in 2025. By how many percentage points did ownership rise?
2. The same rise, from 35% in 2011 to 91% in 2025, is what percent change from the 2011 level?
3. Illustrative Town B records 15 events among 30,000 residents in one year. What is its rate per 100,000 residents?
4. Illustrative Town A records 12 events among 40,000 residents and Town B records 15 events among 30,000 in the same year. By how many events per 100,000 residents is Town B's rate higher than Town A's?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation of what that value shows and one limit of it. For problem 1, say what the figure measures and name its population and its sample. For problem 2, explain why 56 percentage points and your percent change describe the same rise in different units, and say whether the Pew figure is a correlation, a cause, or neither. For problem 3, explain why a rate, not a count, is the fair way to compare the towns. For problem 4, name one research method you would use to learn why Town B's rate is higher, say what that method could and could not show, and name one ethics protection your study would owe the residents you study.

Explain it to a non-expert

The host of a community radio show has never studied sociology and plans to announce, "Town B is more dangerous because its residents are careless." Write a 3–5 sentence message to the host that recommends a more accurate way to say it, explains in everyday words why the rate per 100,000 residents is the fair comparison, says what the rates do not show (they describe the towns, not why the gap exists or what any one resident does), and names one limit, such as that the towns are illustrative or that the figures cover one year. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one accurate wording can be defensible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a volunteer at a public library who read on the library's website that most people who answered its online poll want longer weekend hours. Model answer: "I'd say 'Most people who chose to answer our website poll want longer weekend hours,' not 'Most of our town wants longer hours.' Only people who visit the website and decided to vote are in that poll, so it may leave out people who rarely go online or rarely visit. That kind of sample speaks for the people who opted in, not the whole town. If the library wants the town's view, it could ask a group of residents picked at random from a full address list."

Use that pattern for your message to the host, with your own recommendation and evidence.

Show your arithmetic. A reader should be able to reproduce every number you report from the values above without guessing which values or steps you used.

Deliverables

Submit a single data-reading report containing:

• the four answers, each with the arithmetic shown and a brief interpretation of what that value shows and one limit of it;
• your message to the radio host, recommending a more accurate wording, explaining why the rate per 100,000 residents is the fair comparison, saying what the rates do not show, and naming one limit; and
• a one-line restatement of the values you used, so your results are reproducible.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled diagram of the two towns' rates and the Pew shares with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the computations, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. You may use a calculator or a spreadsheet for the arithmetic. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's numbers, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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