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Using Statistics to Analyze Issues in the Media
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Students from Focsani, Romania
School Number 10
Teacher Petru Dumitru
Students Ages 9-10
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The
students in Petru Dumitru's math class examined gender issues
by compiling statistics in November 1998 based on the number
of men and women that were subjects of the first page articles
in four daily local and national newspapers. They exchanged
these statistics with their partner class in Barcelona who
conducted a parallel project.
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Newspapers and Statistics
- Report written by Cãtãlina Burgã, Mãdãlina
Pavel, Cãtãlina Iordan, Alexandru Grosu, Ionut Trif
- 4th grade students, School 10, Focsani, Romania
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The students in our class compiled statistics in November 1998. It is
about the number of the persons that were subjects of the first page articles
in four daily local and national newspapers.
Together with our partners from Lavínia School, Barcelona, Spain,
we selected five domains: Society, Sports, Economy, Politics and Music-Film-Fashion
(Stars).
Counted Persons
The dates were collected daily and then they were written in a table.
All the participants in our class were divided in five teams, one for
each given domain. Every group from the five participants was in charge
to gather and centralize dates. At the beginning of December all the
dates were presented on the blackboard of the class. This was followed
by discussions and questions about: domains, sexes, classifying the
persons that were counted weekly and daily.
During the 25 days of November- we eliminated the five Sunday days
when the newspapers didn't appear- the students found 233 persons, 142
men and 91 women. Why are there more men than women? Politics and Economy
are domains, which are preferred by men.
We have also realized a general classification of the five domains:
1. Economy (59 counted persons)
2. Stars (58 counted persons)
3. Society (54 counted persons)
4. Sports (40 counted persons)
5. Politics (22 counted persons).
Is there a domain where the number of women is bigger than those of
the men are? That includes the "Stars" column of film-music-fashion
stars. Here there were 43 women and 15 men.
What was the domain with the smallest number of women recorded? Politics,
of course. There were 21 men and 1 women in this domain. During November
we found that the presence of some persons in one domain was closely
bound to national or local events. Thus, in a period of time, sport
events were the cause of rather high frequency of sportsmen in the newspapers'
columns.
What else did we notice? The counted persons in the "Society" domain
were mainly displayed in negative event columns: murders, burglaries
etc.
All the photos on the front page had a feature of something exciting.
A maximum number of persons was registered on the 10th of November,
we counted 10 persons. The minimum number of persons was registered
on the 9th of November, 2 persons, when the first page of the newspapers
wrote about different events.
- Sex divisions
| TOP Women
1. Stars (43)
2. Economy (16)
3. Society (16)
4. Sports (15)
5. Politics (1)
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TOP Men
1. Economy (43)
2. Society (38)
3. Sport (25)
4. Politics (21)
5. Stars (15)
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