Students explore the mathematics behind opinion polls, as well as provides a framework for interpreting trends in opinion poll graphics.

Students read "Public Is Wary but Supportive on Rights Curbs," at the New York Times online. They explore how opinion polls are created and conducted, focusing on the wording of questions and the methods of sampling a population.

Students explore data and Excel spreadsheets. They collect data about political candidates. Students enter the data into a chart on Excel. They create a graph using the data and Excel.

Students explain and appreciate the use of statistics in everyday life. They define basic terms used in statistics and compute simple measures of central tendency.