A newspaper article bemoaning the state of students’ knowledge of geography claimed that more students could identify the island where the 2002 season of the TV show Survivor was filmed than could locate Vermont on a map of the United States. In this activity, you will collect data that will allow you to estimate the proportion of students that can correctly locate the states of Vermont and Nebraska.

1. Working as a class, decide how you will select a sample that you think will be representative of the students from your school.

2. Use the sampling method from Step 1 to obtain the subjects for this study. Subjects should be shown the accompanying map of the United States and asked to point out the state of Vermont. After the subject has given his or her answer, ask the subject to point out the state of Nebraska. For each subject, record whether or not Vermont was correctly identified and whether or not Nebraska was correctly identified.

3. When the data collection process is complete, summarize the resulting data in a table like the one shown here:

4. Construct a pie chart that summarizes the data in the table from Step 3.

5. What proportion of sampled students were able to correctly identify Vermont on the map?

6. What proportion of sampled students were able to correctly identify Nebraska on the map?

7. Construct a comparative bar chart that shows the proportion correct and the proportion incorrect for each of the two states considered.

8. Which state, Vermont or Nebraska, is closer to the state in which your school is located? Based on the pie chart, do you think that the students at your school were better able to identify the state that was closer than the one that was farther away? Justify your answer.

9. Write a paragraph commenting on the level of knowledge of U.S. geography demonstrated by the students participating in this study.

10. Would you be comfortable generalizing your conclusions in Step 8 to the population of students at your school? Explain why or why not.