This post is the second in a series by Ralph Pantozzi, a 2024-2025 Distinguished Albert Einstein Teaching Fellow at the Library of Congress.
Primary sources are an ideal starting point for students to ask questions that can be answered with data as part of a statistical problem-solving cycle. This earlier post focused on single images as data points that themselves contain data. Analyzing other types of sources adds additional considerations of how the data points have been arranged and for what purpose.
These newspaper clippings from January 27 and 29, 1937, communicate data about flooding along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Allow time for students to examine the clippings and then ask them to describe what stands out. What data can they identify? What are they curious about? What can they tell about what was important at the time and place of publication? What do they think was the purpose of these reports?
Students may also be curious about the specific numbers reported. How accurate are they, and how was the data collected? How does the image with the telephone pole convey mathematical information without using specific numbers? Statistical problem-solving can lead students to ask and answer questions about the causes of this flood, determine why it was so disastrous, or make comparisons with other floods. Additional data from around the country is available here and in this collection.
In response to flooding disasters across the country, the United States Forest Service produced The Adventures of Junior Raindrop in 1948. It tells a story using cartoon imagery, colorful language, and real-life film footage. Ask students to watch this 7-minute film and to consider some of the following questions:
- What data is evident in the film? What research might it be based upon?
- Why was this film made and who was its intended audience?
- What questions does the film raise about how water travels on the surface, how gullies are formed, and how they grow?
- What claims are made in the film and what data might support those claims? For example, consider the claim made at 4:42. Could the destruction shown earlier in the film be directly attributable to a forest fire?
- What purposes might be served by the use of phrases such as “hoodlum” raindrops that “gang up” to flood valleys?
Image from film Junior Raindrop.
Oral histories, the written word, figures and images are all data about the earth’s environment. Data informs human actions on individual and societal scales. Statistically literate students examine both data and the stories told around it and seek multiple sources of data as part of their investigations.
Considering recent flooding events in the United States and around the world, students can propose statistical research questions based on current data in the news. Ask students to generate criteria that they can use to ensure that the conclusions they are drawing from this data are built on solid ground.
The next post in this series takes a closer look at erosion data.
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