Before the Deadline

With twenty minutes left before the deadline, Iris was giving her class project a final check while Ben adjusted the colours on their chart. They had counted cyclists on the road outside their college and built their report around an apparently straightforward conclusion: Monday traffic was heavier than Friday traffic. The finished document looked more confident than either of them had felt while collecting the figures.

A detail in the notebook interrupted that confidence. Their Monday count had lasted an hour; Friday’s had been cut short after thirty minutes by rain. Yet the chart placed the two totals beside one another without acknowledging that difference. It invited a comparison which the method did not justify. Even adjusting for the counting periods would not remove the possible effect of the weather.

Ben suggested submitting the report as it stood and explaining the limitation if the teacher noticed. Iris understood the temptation: there was no time to collect fresh data, and the whole introduction led towards the conclusion they now doubted. Nevertheless, leaving the chart unchanged would ask a reader to accept something they themselves could no longer defend. She insisted that the qualification belonged in the report, not in a possible later conversation.

They retained the original figures, removed the claim about Mondays being busier and added a note beneath the chart explaining the unequal periods and the rain. Ben wrote that several counts of equal length would be needed before a useful comparison could be made. With two minutes to spare, they submitted a report whose conclusion was much shorter, and much less impressive, than the one they had planned.

The following day, the teacher asked about the gap between their ambitious introduction and their cautious ending. Iris explained what they had found. The teacher pointed out that the result was limited, but that its limits were now visible to anyone reading it. Outside the classroom, Ben opened a clean notebook page and wrote, “Next time: check the method first.” It was a less colourful improvement than the chart, but one that could change the next project before they reached the final twenty minutes.