Sensitive issues, risk, and civic statistics in the classroom

<p>A newspaper article about the availability of guns in Chicago, presented at a mathematics education conference in that city in 1998, is linked to a tragic shooting near that city in 2022. The article was used in Australia for many years in research with teachers and students to assess statistical literacy in relation to sampling, until ethics committees forbade its use. After a shooting outside of Chicago in 2022, renewed examination of the statistics leading to the article reveals errors in the reporting and raises policy questions related to the roles of risk and sensitive issues and, more generally, civic statistics in the classroom.  Examples are presented of the unwillingness of ethics committees to allow discussions of such issues to take place in the classroom and of publishers not allowing such issues to be mentioned in their texts.  Examples are also given of the types of questions that might be put forth to students. The authors argue that discussions of risk and sensitive issues provide applications of statistics and statistical thinking that are important for students to encounter. </p>