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\centerline{MONT 106N -- Identifying Patterns}
\centerline{Discussion Day 2}
\centerline{October 2, 2009}
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\noindent
{\it Josh Hauser and Patrick Jarvis}
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In class on October 2, 2009, you will be responsible for
about 20 minutes of the class period, during which we will
discuss the article ``Two Mammals' Longevity Boosted" from the 
Wall Street Journal, published
on July 9, 2009.  You can assume everyone will read the article
before class -- the information how to get it is posted on 
the course homepage.  So you don't need to spend a lot of time
summarizing what it says.  Instead, come up with several
good questions that you can use to start the discussion, and 
then be prepared to "moderate" (maybe answer some
questions if people have not understood some point, 
call on people who have something to say, and so
forth).

Some suggestions:  Try to focus about half of
the time on discussing this technical point:  The article reports
some numbers about average life spans and says a 
14\% increase ``is really extreme.''   How would a scientist come to
that conclusion?  To really understand 
whether that is a big increase, what additional information 
would we also need to know?   (Idea is: If we did the experiment
multiple times, the averages of
the lifespans of the treatment and control groups would also
have some histograms describing their distributions, so averages and SD's.  
The comparison is being made
based on that idea.  The implicit claim is that an increase as big as 
14\% is a big number of SD's over the average lifespans of control groups -- 
something we will discuss in detail later in the course!  \emph{Be sure to 
talk to me before the discussion if you want to go over this}.) 
Then, open things up and ask: What practical implications would
there be if human life span could be increased by these methods?
Should we be trying to extend human life spans this way?  
What should a non-expert know about stuff like
this to be well-informed?

I found this by looking at a listing in \emph{Chance News 52} -- 
see link to this on the course homepage.  You can also
get to the original version of the article from there. You 
will see discussion of the issues in Chance News that may give you a 
few ideas of how to get a discussion started.  And of course, 
you can talk things over with me before class too.
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