Data 5 — Find Your Own
Rung 5 · what you can get · two periods
Closes a gap _planning/source-list.md names outright:
"Twelve sources are listed... Nothing in the inventory sends students to these sources to find their own data. That is the gap between consuming visualisations and making one."
Four lessons of judging other people's numbers. This is the one where the student has to go and get some.
The opener that makes the point for free
The Who Americans Spend Their Time With By Age chart in the Evaluating Data deck comes from the American Time Use Survey, and atusdata.org is on the Academy's own source list.
You judged that chart in Data 1. Here is the data it was made from.
Go look at what the person who made it chose to leave out.
That single move — chart, then the data behind the chart — is worth more than any lecture on sourcing. The student has already formed an opinion about the chart. Now they find out what was available to whoever drew it.
The four-part source test
A source is not a link. Before any dataset is used, the student records four things:
| If it is missing | ||
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | who collected it | you have a number with no author |
| Collection date | when, not when it was posted | you do not know what it describes |
| Method | how it was gathered, in their words | you cannot run Data 2 on it |
| Link | to the data, not to an article about the data | you have a claim about a claim |
If any of the four is missing, it is not a source. It is a rumour with a number in it.
The Academy's own rule, already in the investigations, is the same rule: "cite reliable sources and not just random voices."
Two warnings that belong here, both already noted in the corpus and both worth saying to students rather than about them:
- A masthead is not a method. Forbes staff journalism and a Forbes contributor or fee-based Council post carry the same logo and a completely different editorial process. Check which one you have.
- A chart in an article is not the source. It is somebody's rendering of a source. Go up one level. Usually the caption tells you where.
The deliverable
Small on purpose. One number, defended.
1. The dataset, with all four parts of the source test filled in. 2. One number from it. 3. One sentence that number supports. 4. One sentence that number does not support — and that somebody could plausibly think it did. 5. One thing your dataset does not contain that you expected it to. 6. The proxy frame from Data 2, filled in for your dataset, word for word: "This dataset shows where people ________, not where ________ is."
Item 4 is the assignment. Anyone can find a number. Stating what your own evidence cannot carry is the skill, and it is the one that transfers to every proposal, brief, and pitch these students will write in years 11 and 12.
Item 5 is absence is data too, applied to sourcing rather than to a map. A dataset's missing columns tell you what its collectors did not care about, which tells you what it is for.
Using AI on this
Reuse the New York investigation's paragraph verbatim. It is the strongest statement of the policy anywhere in the corpus and it should not be re-drafted:
Use AI as a research tool, not a shortcut. Write a focused prompt based on something you actually observed. Evaluate what comes back. Check at least one claim against a real source. Go deeper with a follow-up. Submit your prompts verbatim — responses get summarized in your own words. Pasting an AI response as your own is obvious and academically dishonest.
One addition specific to this lesson, and it is not a rule so much as a thing that will happen:
A model will hand you a statistic with no source, and it will sound exactly like a real one. When it does, that is the assignment: run the four-part source test on it. If you cannot complete the four parts, you cannot use the number — and you should record that you could not, because it is a finding.
Assessment
Critical Analysis rubric.
- WIDE ANGLE — item 4 requires seeing past the number to what it is being asked to do
- ORIGINAL — the dataset is the student's choice and nobody has the answer key
- SKEPTICAL — the source test, applied to their own find rather than to a slide
- PROVE IT across the rubric — the four-part test is the evidence column made mandatory before the claim rather than after it
Where it runs
Year 11, IS2, as part of MAPS2 — the lead-in to Los Angeles, paired with 04-the-map-is-a-chart.md.
Year 11's question is can you judge what other people did, and this is the first rung where the student is judging their own sourcing. It also arms the two junior units that need outside evidence and currently supply their own: the failure-analysis infographic and the corporate-scandal project.
Runs again, shortened, in year 12 at the front of the capstone, where every claim about a trade area has to be sourced to something a stakeholder can check.
Open
- Which sources are actually usable by a fifteen-year-old in one period? The twelve on the list have not been triaged for that.
usafacts.org,worldpopulationreview.com, andatusdata.orgare the likely starters;statista.compaywalls most of what it shows. - HBR cases are typically paid and licensed for classroom use. Check terms before any of them are handed out as a source.
- Item 5 works best if some students pick a dataset that turns out to be unusable. That is a success and the rubric needs to be able to say so — currently it can, under SKEPTICAL, but it should be said to students up front.