Assignment: Statistics

This is part of a series suggesting different ways to use Moviestorm in schools or other educational environments. They also make useful exercises for film-makers wanting to develop and practice different film-making techniques.  Many more lesson plans and ideas, with free downloadable resources, can be found on the Moviestorm Web site.

Assignment: Statistics
Create a short film demonstrating the understanding of some element of basic statistics and how they apply to the real world.

Suggested techniques

Commentate on sports footage, explaining what the different statistics actually mean. (For example, if we say that the Reds beat the Blues 75% of the time when it’s raining, and 60% of the time when it’s not raining, what can we actually predict about the outcome of the next game if there’s a 25% chance of rain?)

Take a statistic such as x% of people in such a demographic exhibit such a trait, and then show how that can be an effect of other factors rather than or as well as the most obvious one. (For example, x% of Latinos go to college, but the wider picture is that y% of people in these socio-economic groups go to college, and z% of Latinos are in that group.)

You could show that a particular activity “doubles your risk of getting cancer”, and show how that actually means your risk is increased from x% to 2x%, which may still be very low.

Intersperse the presentation with still images and video if appropriate. You could do this as a studio presentation or lecture, and display the images on a screen behind the presenter, or else you can make the images go full-screen.

Add extra content on-screen by using text to complement what you’re saying.

Add appropriate background music to create atmosphere, and ensure you have a striking title sequence.

For teachers: benefits to students

• This helps students understand statistics as presented in the media and see how statistics are applied (or misused) in the real world.
• Visualising statistical information helps students understand what they actually mean.
• Adding multimedia content enables the student to approach the subject in a richer way than just using written text and still images.
• Finding images and music to enhance the presentation requires detailed research.
• Providing narration builds confidence in speaking without needing to do it in front of an audience or camera.
• Creating a multimedia presentation helps develop presentational skills and requires the student to consider what information is best presented using the different media: spoken, written, or visual.

Suitability

• Ages 14+
• Suitable for solo work
• Mathematics, media studies