A real case
The moves you drill aren't abstract. Here's what they look like when the deadline is real and the clean headline is wrong.
A real case · you decide
Mara's headline
Mara — a 17-year-old on the school paper, one week from print
Mara's data set is clean and her deadline is Friday: students who joined the new morning study hall scored higher on the winter exam than students who didn't. The obvious headline writes itself — "Study Hall Boosts Scores." She hovers over the keyboard, then stops.
"Correlation," she mutters — the word her stats teacher tattooed on the class. The study-hall students scored higher, sure. But WHO signed up for a 7 a.m. study hall? The already-motivated kids, the ones with rides, the ones not working evening shifts. That's a confound: the same drive that got them out of bed at 6:45 could be lifting their scores, with the study hall just along for the ride.
She sketches the counterfactual on a napkin: would those same students have scored higher WITHOUT the study hall? If yes, the headline is fiction. So she pulls last year's grades for the kids who joined — many were already climbing before the study hall existed. The trend, not the room, might be the story.
Her editor wants the clean headline. Mara wants the true one. She has two days.
It's Wednesday. What does Mara do with two days left?
A teacher emails: "Attendance also rose in those weeks — maybe THAT lifted scores." How should Mara treat it?
Mara's headline runs Friday: "Morning Study Hall Linked to Higher Scores — Mostly Among Students Already Improving." Less punchy. More true. That trade — a smaller claim you can defend over a bigger one you can't — is the entire craft.