Hi folks - don’t know if this is where I should post this, but tried searching for the “Teacher’s Lounge” with no luck, so guess I’ll put it here.
CSA Unit 3 Lesson 1 Data Sets, which appears to be new for ‘25-’26, doesn’t really make sense to me. The activity guide at:
in the “Asking Questions About Data” section, asks students to mark which questions are answerable using the data tables provided. The problem is, ALL of those questions appear (to me at least) to be answerable. For instance, “What is the average of the values?” is clearly an easy question to answer, yet the answer key at:
says it’s not. I don’t see how that’s correct, unless the question is asking if you can average ALL of the values in ALL of the columns together, which seems nonsensical (and isn’t the meaning used in the “Answering Questions About Data” section on the last page, which, yes, proposes to answer “What is the highest average score?”).
Am I missing something? Can someone explain why the answer key has ANY checkboxes blank? I really think every one of those questions is answerable. Thanks!
@mbeck Mr. Beck, thank you for posting your question to the forum. After looking through the lesson and the attached documents, I believe that the term “particular” could be confusing or ambiguous. In my opinion the term “distinct” or “individual” could have been less confusing. Let me know if this helps.
Hi Sylvia - I appreciate your response, but I’m still not really following the argument. Can we make it more specific?
In the section “Asking Questions About Data,” in the first table (“School Club Memberships”), the answer key asserts that you can NOT answer “What is the average of the values?” Why is that? I assumed it means “what is the average value of each column,” which is clearly answerable - but even if it meant “what is the result of every single numeric value all averaged together,” that’s still answerable, albeit nonsensical.
In the next two tables, “Classroom Supplies Inventory” and “Online Quiz Scores,” the key says you CAN answer “What is the average of the values?” Why is this question answerable for these two tables, but not the first? Finally, the key says it’s not answerable for the last table (“Product Reviews”) - why?
Back in the first table (“School Club Memberships”), the key says you CAN’T answer “Are there any duplicate values?” But that’s clearly something that’s easily determinable. That holds true for every other table as well, yet the key asserts none of them can be answered.
In that same first table, the key claims that “Does at least one value have a particular property?” and “Do all of the values have the same particular property?” ARE NOT answerable, but “How many values have a particular property?” IS answerable. What is the meaning of the word “property” in these statements? What is the meaning of the word “value?” Which if any of them means “column?”
Hope I’m not coming across as too pedantic here - I’m just really not understanding what these questions mean, or why the distinctions between tables. There’s no rhyme or reason I can see. Can you help? Thanks!
Hi @mbeck , thank you so much for bringing this up on the forum! I would have to agree with your assessment of the answer key. I don’t fully agree with what it says. I am going to rate this lessons and I would encourage others to do the same. I’ll write my own response, but you could just copy and paste your observations in the textbox “Do you have any feedback on this lesson for the Code.org curriculum team?”.
I would think that the more traffic a lesson gets with people rating it the higher up the priority stack it would go for the curriculum team. Since this is a new lesson for this years curriculum there are definitely some things that need to get ironed out.