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Grade 12 Challenge: Spot the Bias in the Claim Worksheet with Answers
Grade 12 (US) · Year 13 (UK) · Class 12 (India) · English
Unit 7: Going FurtherCritical Reading ChallengeChallenge
Reading headlines and ads critically: survivorship bias, correlation vs causation, sampling bias, base rates and cherry-picking. This free high school worksheet has 12 questions and a full answer key. Print it or save it as a PDF — every answer is checked by code, not guessed.
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Practice Sheetaethelsystems.comChallenge: Spot the Bias in the Claim
Grade 12 · English
Name
Class
Date
Learning goal: Critical Reading Challenge
Directions: Read each question carefully and write your answer on the line.
A shop marks a jacket "Was $400, now $199", making $199 feel cheap even though the jacket never sold at $400. What bias does this use?
Answer: anchoring
- 1
An online review site shows mostly 5-star and 1-star ratings because only very happy or very angry customers bother to write. What bias is this?
- 2
A sports drink ad shows only the three weeks when sales went up and hides the rest of the year. What is this called?
- 3
A website asks its own visitors "Do you use the internet daily?" and reports that 98% of people do. What is wrong with the sample?
- 4
"Ice-cream sales and drownings rise together, so ice cream causes drowning." What hidden factor explains both?
- 5
A school reports that students who take extra tutoring score higher, but only motivated students signed up for tutoring. What problem is this?
- 6
A teacher praises the student who scored worst and next test they improve; she concludes praise works. Scores near the extremes tend to move back toward average anyway. What is this effect?
- 7
A survey asks "Don't you agree the unfair new tax should be scrapped?" What is wrong with the question?
- 8
Hospital A has a lower overall survival rate than Hospital B, yet A does better for both mild and severe cases — because A takes far more severe patients. What is this paradox called?
- 9
Planes returning from battle were covered in bullet holes on the wings, so engineers planned to armour the wings. Why might the engines need armour instead?
- 10
"Nine out of ten dentists recommend our gum" — the dentists could choose several brands, and 90% also picked rivals. What is misleading?
- 11
A fund advertises that its best 10 investment funds all beat the market — but it quietly closed the 40 that did badly. What bias is this?
- 12
"Every famous app founder dropped out of college — so dropping out makes you more likely to succeed." Which bias ignores all the dropouts who failed?
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Free printable worksheets with answer keys · aethelsystems.com/worksheets/english/12/challenge_bias_detective
Answer key — Challenge: Spot the Bias in the Claim (Grade 12)
- 1.non-response bias / self-selection bias
- 2.cherry-picking
- 3.sampling bias / selection bias
- 4.hot weather / a confounding variable
- 5.self-selection bias / a confounding variable
- 6.regression to the mean
- 7.loaded question / leading question
- 8.Simpson's paradox
- 9.survivorship bias / planes hit in the engines never returned
- 10.cherry-picking / misleading statistic
- 11.survivorship bias
- 12.survivorship bias
Answer key (click to show)
- 1.non-response bias / self-selection bias
- 2.cherry-picking
- 3.sampling bias / selection bias
- 4.hot weather / a confounding variable
- 5.self-selection bias / a confounding variable
- 6.regression to the mean
- 7.loaded question / leading question
- 8.Simpson's paradox
- 9.survivorship bias / planes hit in the engines never returned
- 10.cherry-picking / misleading statistic
- 11.survivorship bias
- 12.survivorship bias
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