Leading up to Week 9

• I have posted Participation grades for the first half of the semester on turnitin.com. Use the gradebook feature on that site to view. This is out of 100 points with 100 points more being given at the end of the semester. There is no reason that the second score can't be much higher or lower than the first score. 20 of those points come from the first-week assignment. The other 80 are based on participation in weeks 2-8.

• I get many extra credit requests at the end of the semester. My reply is always that the opportunity to raise the grade is present all semester long in the form of Participation points. Owning the texts is helpful. Reading them, more helpful still.

Heads up: At the upcoming class I will ask you -- before class on on Oct 31/Nov 1 -- to find and post an example of a flawed/misleading statistical study. Due to instructor absence on 10/24 - 10/25, this assignment has been postponed for now. There are different ways a study can mislead. The problem might be with ambiguous terminology, inaccurate graphic representations, faulty conclusions, bad assumptions, or illogical methodology. An example of a bad statistical study due to ambiguous terminology: A study showing that 75% of English major graduates are successful after college. "Successful" is not defined, which could lead to meaningless results. Example 2: A study showing that 30% of homes in a neighborhood contain at least one criminal. What is a criminal? Does that include people who speed, who walk their dogs off-leash, who were cited for a noisy party, who littered?

Post your example (a link to the article) to the turnitin.com Discussion Forum as you did for the DUI ad. Your post should consist of the link to the article. You will explain the problem with the study in class.