Stories

Who wants a load of statistical data, and how does that get anyone to vote? The answers are - nobody (except, perhaps, accountants and actuaries) and it doesn't. So, instead of presenting potential voters with a bunch of statistics telling them to vote, why not a little story?

Here is one option for a story on why Americans should vote (thanks to Rachel Meyers):

While the United States is considered to be the greatest power in the world and a leader in democracy, voter turnout does not reflect this statement. In the 2004 election, 60 percent of eligible voters turned out at the poles, in comparison to 8 percent of the eligible population of New Zealand, 76 percent of spain, 86 percent of Sweden, 79 percent of France, 82 percent of Italians, 78 percent of Germany and 100 percent of Russia. Of the world's 20 largest democratic nations, only Japan and Switzerland ranked lower in voter turnouts.

To visually tell this story, I would like to use a cartogram showing the geographical size of each country, then display the size of the voting population (in a big circle, probably). Finally, within the population circle, I will show the size of the voting population. At the end, I will show the other countries' voting populations in comparison to the US voting population. The US voters may be eaten pac man style by Russia's. We'll just have to wait and see.

Associative Word List

pac man, size, circle, cartogram, cheerio, doughnut, percentage, pie graph, international, globe, voting, poll, inequality, target, scale, comparison, simple, arcade game, map, latitude, longitude, portion, turnout, weight, nationalism, patriotism, pride, embarrassment, shame, outperform, exceed, internationalism, doctrine, count, counting, enumeration, tally, analyze, dissect, take apart, part, portion, division.

OK, I think that's it for now with the word list. I am always open to more suggestions. Now for the KEY WORDS:

Pac Man: video game originally developed in Japan. Immensely popular in the US. Centers around a circular yellow man (or woman, as in Ms. Pac Man) who has to eat all of the little white circles to advance to the next level.

Latitude: angular distance North or South of a point on the earth's surface. Measured by meridians. The horizontal lines.

Longitude: angular distance East or West of a point on the earth's surface. Based on the prime meridian. The vertical lines.

That's it for now. Tomorrow: expect a slight chance of more definitions with a certainty of a thoughtful question about Reading 2.