Data vs. Evidence

Teaching a Lesson Without Language-No Way


After participating in last classes conversation on language, I view language as all forms of communication. There would be no way to teach a lesson without language. In my mind, language encompasses sign language, oral language, and thinking. Even thinking about what you are about to say uses language because without it, what would we think? In class we discussed whether a simple expo marker was language and most of the class decided that it was. Since we all thought "pen" in our minds when we looked at it, we used language to identify it as such.

Data vs. Evidence


Our class came across the discussion of whether information was data or evidence when completing the Mr. Xavier activity. The story of Mr. Xavier's unfortunate death (possibly a lion?) had many examples of both data and evidence. From class discussion, we deduced that data is factual information that can be qualitative or quantitative and supports evidence. Evidence is relevant, observable data that is constructed to fit a theory and used to make inferences.

It was difficult at first to try to pick which statements were data or evidence, but after using our constructed definitions it became easier.