Why do this problem?

This problem challenges students to think about the way data can be presented to support an argument. There is the opportunity for cross-curricular collaboration as students look at communication and real world issues.
 

Possible approach

Show the video (and perhaps also the video from the USA linked at the bottom of the problem).
You could pause the video at each stage to allow students to reflect for themselves about their own perception of wealth distribution.

What makes the videos so powerful is the vast difference between people's perception and reality.

Ask the class to think of their own areas of interest to find a question they would like to explore. Once students have thought for a couple of minutes, put them into pairs or groups and ask them to share their ideas and choose a question together. Alternatively, the whole class could agree on the same question to investigate.

Explain that each group will prepare presentations similar to the ones in the video. They will need time to collect data and research their chosen topic. For parts of the question about opinions or perceptions, let students know that they need to be helpful and supportive in helping other groups with their data collection. If the whole class is working on the same question, then the whole class could agree on what data they need to collect and smaller task forces could research different aspects of the topic.

For data found on the Internet, make sure that students act as critical friends when reviewing the sources of each others' data. You may wish to allow homework time for data collection.

Once the data is collected, students should decide how to represent the data. Even if the whole class is working on the same question and has the same data, you might want to put them into smaller groups at this stage. Each group should prepare their data presentation to share with the class. Explain that each group should brainstorm ideas with contributions from everyone before choosing their format. Then they can work together on their presentation.

Allow time for groups to share their presentations, and encourage questions. Did they find the presentation easy to understand? Was it interesting? Were they surprised? If the whole class worked on the same question, they could choose their favourite to improve together and present to another class, or at an assembly.
 

Possible support

Picturing the World invites students to think about data representation of large scale statistics in a slightly less politicised way.

Possible extension

Particularly powerful presentations could be shared with the rest of the school and the wider community, and perhaps shared through social media.