🔍 Data Detective: Lesson 1

What Makes a Good Question?

📊 Progress: Unit 1, Lesson 1 of 4

💎 XP Available: 25

Welcome, Data Detective!

Today you’ll learn one of the most important skills in data science: asking the right questions! Bad questions give us bad data, but good questions unlock amazing discoveries.

Think about it: If you wanted to know what games your friends like, would you ask “Do you like Minecraft or hate vegetables?” That doesn’t make sense, right? Let’s discover why!

Activity 1: Survey Detective Challenge

Can you spot what’s wrong with these survey questions?

“Do you like pizza or hate vegetables?”
Problem: _______________ (Click to reveal)
“How many times do you eat?”
Problem: _______________ (Click to reveal)
“Rate food 1-10”
Problem: _______________ (Click to reveal)

📚 The Five Types of Survey Questions

Every type of question gives us different kinds of data. Here’s your detective toolkit:

Question Type	Example	Best Chart Type	Data Category
✅ Yes/No	“Do you have a pet?”	Pie Chart	Binary
🔘 Multiple Choice	“Favorite subject?”	Bar Chart / Pie Chart	Categorical
☑️ Check All	“Which devices do you use?”	Multiple Bar Charts	Multi-select
⭐ Likert Scale	“Rate your love of reading (1-5)”	Line Graph	Ordinal
🔢 Numeric	“Hours of screen time per day?”	Histogram / Scatter Plot	Continuous

Activity 2: Practice Survey – Classroom Preferences

Try out each question type with this sample survey:

💡 Detective’s Golden Rule

🎯 Ready for Real Survey Topics?

Now that you know how to write good questions, explore exciting survey topics to investigate!

🔍 Explore Survey Topics

🔬 Math Preference Study