1. Students will use random sampling to draw inferences about a population.
2. Students will investigate the chance process.
3. Students will develop, use, and evaluate probability models.
4. Students will draw informal comparative inferences about two populations.
5. Students will be able to describe how genetic variation can increase some individual’s probability of surviving and reproducing.

To help students learn about populations and some things that can influence them, they will learn the rules of a game called Liar's Dice. This game sets up a situation for the students to learn about populations and sampling. In learning about populations and sampling, students will work through the math standards for 7th-grade students related to statistics and probability. This lesson will also allow students to engage with the middle school life science standard MS-LS4-4 which describes populations and probability based on genetic variation.

Start with the Population Slideshow. 

Slide 1 

Teacher's note: This activity will lightly introduce populations. If you have yet to talk about them, start with different populations of people that would exist in a school. You might discuss grade levels, such as how a kindergartener might be different from a 5th-grade student, and how the sixth grade students differ from the seventh grade students. Follow up the differences discussion with ways that those groups are similar.   

Slide 2

Tell the students: Understanding populations is essential for health care. Some of the ways that we make decisions in health care are related to classifications, like genetics (genes, DNA), behavior (how you feel or act in a specific situation), or geographic region (where you live).

Slide 3

Ask students to construct a KWL chart and fill out the "Know" and "Want to know" sections.

Note: The KWL tool helps students activate previous knowledge about a topic by writing what they know in the "Know" section. Next, the student plans what they want to learn about a subject in the "want to know" selection. Finally, students should take a minute to reflect on what they have learned in the "Learned" column. The learned column reflection could happen as they work through the activity or after finishing. After giving your students time to write about what they know and want to know about populations, have them share with a table partner or lead a classroom discussion about what they wrote. 

Slide 4

Say to the students: “We are going to learn about a model for a population, and we are going to run several simulations."

Introduce the term simulation.

A simulation:

It is an imitation of a situation or a process. Ask your students if they know of any simulations. 

A model: 

It is a system or thing used as an example to follow or imitate. 

Say to the students: “When scientists want to know more about a population, they often turn to simulations. We will try to understand more about populations in this class by running a simulation (game). This game will help us create two populations, one we know about and one we are guessing about.”

“In health care, doctors and researchers have some people they know a lot about (our friends, family, or patients they have worked with in the past). They also have a large population they need to learn about. Because of this unknown population and its size, scientists (medical doctors and Ph.D. doctors) make predictions based on their knowledge to decide how to help patients. All jobs that you might get in the future will use their accumulated knowledge to make the best decision possible. In statistics, when you use the knowledge, you have gathered to make a better model, we call it the Bayesian model. “

Teachers note: They may mention video games that are ever present, but most games are a simulation of some act; even batting practice or using a golf club on a driving range is a type of simulation. Beyond games, a simulation can be a discussion where we practice saying the right thing at the right time, like a mock job interview.   

Slide 5

Teachers note: Students are going to learn the rules of a game. This game has students comparing two populations. One they have complete knowledge of and one they only know a few things about. When they figure out the rules, they will have a model for how to survey a population. After they have played the game and recorded some data about the game, the students will work as a small team of 2-3 to design an algorithm. Later slides will help students to understand the rules for the game and that an algorithm is a computable set of steps that can be used to achieve an outcome. 

In this case, they will build an algorithm that plays Liar’s Dice to study how the algorithm works in the simulation. For math teachers, we are working on the statistics and probability items students encounter in the 7th-grade math standards. For science teachers, we are modeling how scientists learn about populations and the natural history of conditions so that health care can be improved for a population. This game can also be a great way to talk about genetic variation and the change in gene pools over time. For more information on this, check out this blog.

Slides 6-11

Introduction to the game of Liar's Dice. Print out the Liar's Dice: How to Play document for easy access to the rules.

To play this game, you will need several 6-sided dice and a centralized space for the kids to play around. A single desk might be too tight of quarters for students to play and not have problems looking at their neighbor's dice. Playing on the floor or at tables where the students can have a little more space might be a good idea. 

The rules for the game suggest five dice for each player. They can start with less, and the game will be shorter. The shorter the game, the harder it is to develop strategies, and the students will gather less data about a single game, making it harder to make the best decisions about the algorithm they will need to construct.  

The game works well with 3-5 players. Depending on how well the group stays on task, each additional player will add a minute per dice they are playing with.  

Let the students explore the simulation by playing a game to completion which should take around 15 minutes to complete. After they have completed one game of Liar’s Dice have them start a second game where they fill out the table provided in the Populations and Predications Data Collection printable.

For your reference, watch the Liar’s Dice Example Video. When students are finished collecting data from their game, ask students to answer the questions in the Student Journal. The final question in this journal asks students to develop an algorithm. Continue through the slideshow to explore what an algorithm is.

Slide 12

Students should watch this video to discover what an algorithm is. The video is 5:30 minutes long.

The next step is to develop an algorithm. An algorithm is a set of actions that can be followed to achieve an outcome. The goal of the students is to develop an algorithm that will allow them to win the next game of Liars' Dice. If you have time, let the students play a few more rounds of dice using their algorithm to see if they can optimize the algorithm. 

Slide 13

Teachers notes:
The next few slides are to help lead the students through a discussion where they think about how studying a population of people can help them care for people. On this slide, ask students to discuss or journal their thoughts regarding the questions. Behavioral research uses surveys and questions to understand a population so they can receive the appropriate health care. Clinical research tests new treatments on a small percentage of a population or different populations and makes predictions about the effectiveness of the treatment on a larger population.

Read the following statement:
One strategy of survival that some organisms use is to take care of one another when they are having trouble and luckily, people have decided that caring for one another is our best interest. To do that, we have a variety of ways that we learn about what our best options are. Often, we try a treatment for a new disease using our best guess on how to treat it. After some time and research, we find that some of our options for treatment work better than others.

Slide 14
Read the following statement:
Imagine how you felt during your first round of Liars' Dice. You may have yet to learn what the rules were or how other people were going to act. After a while, you start to understand what you can about the population of dice and the people with which you were playing. Just like that over time a group of people can learn the best treatment for a specific disease. The term that doctors give to what happens when a person has an ailment, and you learn about what is happening is the “natural history” of a disease.

Slide 15

Read the following Statement:
Knowing more about both (the natural history of a disease or how it affects the body and the population) lets you better understand how to treat someone best. When this happens, you will want to do your best to test (Clinical trial) to ensure that your new treatment is better than the old treatment when one exists and that your new treatment works on different populations. These treatments are how we make health care the best possible. Similarly, knowing the rules of the game liars' dice can help you build an algorithm, but if you do not know about the people playing the game liars dice, it can change how successful your algorithm is.  

Slide 16

Read the following statement:
When discussing a disease, as we move forward, we don't discuss a condition that anyone has. We will discuss an imaginary illness. The natural history of our illness presents as a man with a nose that grows when he lies. He has a particular behavior, and unlike many types of behavior, we can tell after he does the behavior, so we will know if he lies. The treatment for this patient is that if he lies, he must fess up to his lie, and his nose will shrink back to size.

Optional statement:

These behaviors seem strange but may be simple enough to help understand why clinical trials are vital. Human beings make many choices that affect their health including: taking medications as prescribed, getting regular cancer screenings, eating a healthy diet, or attending annual physicals. For any of these choices, we want to understand what drives these decisions so we can implement systems that lead to the best patient outcome. Clinical trials are important for improving the standard of care. To learn more about the clinical trials done by Sanford Health, visit the Clinical Research website.

Slide 17

Lead the students through the document Clinical Trial Discussion Questions.

Slide 18

Sanford Connection: 

Clinical research is essential to what happens at Sanford Research and within the Sanford health care system. Many roles play crucial parts, like our research project managers, who keep the ball rolling on lots of different clinical trials that help move health care forward.

These clinical trial managers must ensure that all the criteria of each clinical trial are being met. They help in the automated process of gathering information from our Electronic Medical Records (EMR) so we can quickly understand if a specific patient has the correct prerequisites to join a clinical trial. Then they work through additional questions and surveys to make sure that the patient that comes up in the EMR is a good candidate (reducing the chances for a false negative or false positive)

One place that we are very excited to be involved in clinical research is cancer. As people learn more about cancer, like how it grows and interacts with the body, we are introduced to new medications that have different ways that they affect the body. We have doctors who can reach out to pharmaceutical companies and connect those companies with patients for whom the current standard of care needs to be improved. This crossover helps extend lives and allows us to understand better what is happening inside the human body.

Cancer research is one of our broadest categories. We have additional groups like Cardiac Health looking into new pacemakers that are smaller, making them easier to put into a body. This smaller model is easier to take out again in case it needs to be replaced or modified (The average life span of a pacemaker is 5-15 years). Our cardiac team is also looking at new medicines that help people with congestive heart failure. When cells are damaged, our body responds by creating inflammation around that spot to increase the availability of nutrients, increase the temperature, and increase the rate at which cells can use energy to either grow or repair damage. When this happens in the heart, it can cause trouble because there is a limited amount of space that a cell can expand to, and the cells have a limited capacity to react to the changes of inflammations. With those things in mind, the medicine in this clinical trial helps to reduce the inflammation around the heart, possibly helping those patients have better outcomes.

One last group that does important work with populations within hospitals is Behavioral Health. It is a branch of medicine that helps people overcome various habits, routines, and addictions to make their lives better and more productive. The need for help with any of these topics can happen to anyone; most people will benefit from at least one of these resources during their lifetime.

Sanford Research uses time and resources to optimize the care of patients, and one of the most important tools we have is gathering information about our patients' using surveys. As we collect data, we have several scientists who spend time making sure that the questions we ask have high psychometric properties, which means that the questions get accurate and repeatable information. Ultimately, getting high-quality data helps to inform/improve treatment and reduces costs to the patient and the health system.

Follow up activity:

If you are interested in connecting this document closer to genes and genetics, please visit our "Exploring Genetic Diversity Through Games" blogon how Liar's Dice and algorithms are related to genes and genetics.  

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