Duplicate this page before you start, and write all your answers in your own copy.
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Why this lesson matters for your essay. Two of the six titles for your own exam session, May 2027, ask about exactly the kind of knowledge you will look at today.
Title 3: In the production of knowledge, how can knowledge be reliable if it is built on assumptions? Discuss with reference to the human sciences and one other area of knowledge.
Title 6: In the pursuit of knowledge, what value is there in exploring the paradoxical or the counterintuitive? Discuss with reference to the natural sciences and one other area of knowledge.
Nothing on this page answers either title. But every case today is real, named and dated: the kind of evidence an essay needs. Look out for the 📌 marks, which show where a case connects to one of these titles. At the end, you will decide what the cases let you say.
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The natural sciences unit ended with seven stories and one question: when someone else, somewhere else, repeats the work, do they get the same result? Today the thing being studied is not ozone or a particle. It is people. It is you.
Answer two questions about the United States. Nobody expects you to know the answers, so a guess is fine.
Look at the month you were born in. If it is January to June, open Version A. If it is July to December, open Version B. Open only your own version, do not talk, and do not look at anyone else's screen.
When everyone has finished, your teacher will collect the class's estimates. Do not read on until then.
Version A and Version B asked exactly the same two questions. The only difference was the number you saw first. Version A gave you small numbers: 100 babies, 200,000 people. Version B gave you large ones: 50,000 babies, 5,000,000 people. Neither number was a hint. Both were chosen to be far too small or far too large.
The real answers: 3,628,934 babies were born in the United States in 2024, which is about 9,900 a day. At the 2020 census, Chicago had 2,746,388 people.
National Center for Health Statistics, "Births in the United States, 2024," NCHS Data Brief no. 535 (Hyattsville, MD: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2025), https://cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db535.htm.
US Census Bureau, "QuickFacts: Chicago City, Illinois," https://census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/chicagocityillinois/PST120223.
✍️ Write here: fill in the table from the class results. The middle estimate is the median: put all the estimates for one version in order, and take the one in the middle. A few wild guesses cannot pull it around the way they can pull an average.
| Question | Middle estimate, Version A | Middle estimate, Version B | Real answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Babies born in the US each day | about 9,900 | ||
| Population of Chicago | 2,746,388 |
✍️ Write here, on your own.