I was going through exam papers with my Y11 last week, and a number of the class weren't there, due to Dance, PE, and Art exams (its that time of year). Some of those left were asking about next week's referendum, and commented that AV wasn't fair and was too complicated.
So we did it.
We modelled the situation, running a vote for where they would like to go on their end of year trip. They suggested the following places...
- Alton Towers
- Bournemouth Beach
- Chessington
- Legoland
- Thorpe Park
I asked them to vote, and the votes came out at...
3 for Alton Towers, 11 for Bournemouth, 3 for Chessington, 1 for Legoland and 5 for Thorpe Park. The general consensus was that clearly a trip to Bournemouth was out and out the winner. Then I pointed out that while 11 had voted for a trip to the beach, 12 had voted for a theme park trip.
We then AV'ed the vote, by physically moving around the room to redistribute the votes. As it happens Bournemouth did win, as some people wanted as a first choice to go to a theme park, but couldn't face the long coach trip to Alton Towers.
They weren't all convinced by the argument that it was a better system, they did at least understand how it worked, and why some people see it as fairer.
Again, I was lucky - the fact that the numbers added up so well to 11/13 for the fptp system was something of a gift - something you just cannot plan for.
This is similar to the video on youtube by "Dan Snow", if you're interested, but I got lucky the numbers worked out the way I wanted!
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