CIA World Fact Book
Procedures

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Note - An on-line version of this lesson is available for students

Step1 Direct students to the home page for the CIA handbook. When students arrive at the site they will need to go to the countries section. There they will find a database of information about countries of the world.

Step 2 Explain to students that they will use the database to collect specific information on the following countries: Angola, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, India, Ivory Coast, Japan, Sweden, Russia, United States. Have each student pick one country from those listed. They should then complete a chart below with data for the eight topics listed below. Have students record data on a data chart.

    Categories

    Data topics

    Geography

    area: total

    People

    population

    Government

    government type

    Economy

    per captia income

    Communications

    televisions

    Transportation

    Airports

    Military

    military expenditures

    Trans-national issues

    disputes

Step 3 After students have collected their data they will test the following propositions.

    a. There is a relationship between military expenditures and per-capita income.

    b. There is a relationship between area and population.

    c. There is a relationship between ethnic groups and languages.

    d. There is a relationship between airports (total) and GDP per-capita.

    e. There is a relationship between suffrage and constitution.

Step 4 In order to test the propositions students will need to look for patterns between the data and make a claim based on these patterns. Students should use the following scale for their claims. Students should also describe the relationship, if any, which exists between these two variables and determine what evidence supports this relationship (or lack of relationship)?

    Relationship

    Score

    none

    0

    slight

    1

    moderate

    2

    significant

    3

Step 5 Ask students to share their interpretations of the relationships. If there are different interpretations, discuss why these differences exist. During the discussion display the claims about these relationships made by students.

This module was created by John K. Lee of the University of Virginia.