Scientific Critiquing Task
Scientific Critiquing Task
Scientific Critiquing Task
About this Task
Learning Outcomes Assessed:2, 3, 4, 5, 6Due Date:2 February, 11:59 pmWeight:35%Length:1200 (10%) words which do not include figures, tables, in-text references and bibliography.
Task Description
This assignment will assess your ability to apply Quantitative Reasoning to a problem of your choosing and to report your deliberations in a clear and effective manner. Most Australian politicians have made statements that have created controversies and enraged sentiments. Some vouch for these statements by claiming that they have every right to say what they want because we live in a democracy and live under the 'banner' of freedom of speech and expression, but others argue that this right comes with reasonable restrictions and responsibilities.
Your task is to choose a publicly available quantitative statementmade by a politician from State or Federal government and critique it.
In this task, you will evaluate a publicly available statement of a quantitative nature made by a politician concerning green energy. This statement MUST have been made in 2023 and proof of this MUST be supplied.
In scientific writing, aprimary sourcefor a set of data, a result based on data, or a theory, is the place where it is originally published (and usually where the result or theory is originally substantiated). Sources that subsequently reference this information are calledsecondary sources.
Virtually any form of communication can be a primary or secondary source written or video; scientific articles, media pieces, social media or blog posts. A good example of a secondary source is a claim made by a politician. Politicians are rarely primary sources of information rather, they rely on others to substantiate the claims they make.
In this task, you must identify a statement or argument of a quantitative nature. You might choose a statement you disagree with, one that you agree with, or one that seems controversial or open to interpretation. You must be able to cite a publicly available source in which the statement is made. Having chosen your source statement, identify relevant and objective numerical data from authoritative primary sources that can be used to assess the validity of the statement, and write a report critiquing the statement on the basis of your analysis of this data. You must include your own analysis of the primary data, which must include calculations involving the primary data (although these calculations can be quite simple in nature). You must conclude with your own opinion (whether you agree, whether you disagree, or reasons to defer judgment) regarding the statements validity. A crucial goal of your task is to convince the audience reading your critique (e.g. the marking team) of the merits of your own conclusion, in the face of the available evidence.To the best of your knowledge, the statement you choose should be different to those chosen by other students.
HYPERLINK "https://lms.griffith.edu.au/courses/17520/pages/scientific-critiquing-task?module_item_id=432558" l "_ftnref1"[1]although of course not all political statements respect the need for a claim to be substantiated: the claim could be made with little to no consideration for any supporting evidence.
Criteria and Marking
The marking of the Assessment item will be focusedon:
Whether a student has sufficient material and appropriate sources to make their arguments.
The source and types of data that could be used for the critical response.
The choice of analysis and statistical representation of the data and how this could be justified.
Whether you understand the models used in the research papers and are able to convey this in your arguments.
Is the complexity of the materials, models, and possible response appropriate?
Paragraph and grammatical structure.
Use of diagrammatic representations and infographics.
Layout Requirements
Use the Word template provided for your assessment task. You do not have to use Word if you do not want to, but please use a similar layout and the same font sizes.
Dont add title pages or abstracts.
Submit your final task as a pdf document.
Length: 1200 words 10%, excluding displayed equations, tables, figures, figure captions, references, and word count.
Please include your word count at the start of your document.
You must use APA referencing style.
Because you must include numerical arguments as part of your critique, these could cause the word count to become quite large. To avoid this, we will allow you to include an optional "Numerical workings" appendix that you can refer to in the main text. This cannot contain any of the critique itself, which must be in the main text. But it can contain supporting arguments that you reference in your critique (much in the way that a table or figure can).
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Research Paper Requirements - Your Evidence!!
The source of the statement must be a single identifiable and directly quoted statement such as an online article, speech, interview, press release, or social media post.
You are to include any relevant context for the statement (who, what, where, why, when and how)
The statement must involve some quantitative claim whose validitycan be tested usingnumerical data and mathematical or statistical calculations of some kind. You will be expected to suggest some mathematical way of investigating thisYour assessment must include comparisons with at leastfiveindependent authoritative primary sources (different from the original quotation source), such as:
peer-reviewed journals
published academic text or reference booksofficial government or expert body reports (e.g. Census data, ), or
public statements by widely acknowledged subject matter experts (e.g. an astronomer on stars, state chief medical officer on morbidity).
Please note that newspaper and general media articles and stories areNOTto be used in your argument construction.
Please note that this assessment is NOT a literature review but a critical analysis of a statement.
The validity of the comparison must also be evaluated. Consider changes to underlying assumptions, definitions, techniques, geographical boundaries, reporting requirements, statistical or sampling methods, potential ambiguities, etc. Consider the scope for reasonable disagreement in interpretations.
Your critique must include some mathematical calculations related to the use of data to support or oppose a particular viewpoint. This might be simple calculations demonstrating how the available data compares with a claim (or a consequence related to a claim), or a simple statistical analysis (such as those considered in the course).
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What is expected?
The purpose of this suggested template is to give you a starting point for some of the necessary materials needed for the critiquing task. Some possible checkpoints for the framework of the critique are given but it is to be noted that this is only a start and that this isNOTan exhaustive list. Other componentswill need to be added.
Some considerations to be covered are:
What is the claim or prediction? Who made it? When was it made and where was it made?
Is there anything unusual about the claim/prediction considering the political or business environment at the time? Explain.
What data are you going to use in your report? Where does it come from and why is this data useful?
How are you going to use the data/mathematical technique in the report? This will need to be explained. Whilst you do not need to reproduce the results, you should consider how you could better support your arguments using mathematical models.
How does the statistical or mathematical technique help to answer your claim/prediction? This will need to be explained.
Why is the mathematical/statistical technique appropriate for your critique? This will need to be justified.
What diagrammatic representations would be useful to aid in your response to the claim/prediction? Why are they suitable?
What information do I need from the sources of research?You need to be able to:
Obtain all the details needed for a bibliographyWrite about how the article can be used to help explain/defend your perspective of the claim/prediction.
What data does the article use and what technique are they using? This will need to be explained.
Why would this technique be useful for your critique? This must be researched, and the applicability stated.
PLEASE NOTE: everything that you write in the Scientific Critiquing TaskMUSTbe explained and justified.
Example Statement(NOT TO BE USED!!!)
A spokesperson of the Gerbils United party (GU), Agnes G made the following claim on X (platform formally known as Twitter) on 1 of January 2023 (the reference and the link to this X should be in references)
"By the end of 2030, we plan to replace all power plants in Australia with hamsters in the running wheels. This will meet all energy needs of Australia and provide us with the excess that we can sell to other countries."
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Other tips
Try to choose a statement about something that you find interesting it makes the assignment much more fun! Feel free to choose a statement you disagree with or something you want to understand more deeply.
If the claim is based on one result from a specific source, include a summary of the analysis used to obtain that result, and compare it with other similar investigations.
As noted earlier, include your own attempts to analyse data where its possible to do so, even if they are only approximate. This is often a useful way of understanding a topic more deeply, even if the mathematics is relatively simple. But be clear that this is only a rough calculation when you write about it.
Refer to Weeks 6-10 for advice on structuring your critique, appropriate language style, and appropriate ways of presenting numerical data (in-text, figures and tables).
Use the marking rubric to assess your own work as you go (see submission point)
Submission
You must submit your assessment task as a .pdf document. Please put your name and student number in the header, as indicated in the template Word document. You should submit your assessment task via the submission point below
Title: Descriptive title of the task
Author:
Student ID:
Use Heading 1 for Section Headings, like Introduction
and Heading 2 for subsections (if you want any)
Please leave the page margins and fonts as they are in this document. The Normal paragraph style has been re-defined to be convenient for marking your work more easily, so please use this style for your report.
Next subheading using Heading 2 (if you want one)
More text
Next Section Heading using Heading 1, such as Theory and Data
Analysis
Conclusion
and so on.
References
Insert your list of references here. Use APA referencing style.
