Counting the right events
Read for meaning first. Select a highlighted word if you want a closer look.
An indiscriminate tally combined ordinary rule breaches and recorded crimes in a classroom's entirely fictional casebook without distinguishing their stated categories. Selecting only repeated-offense cases would skew the summary, making that selected group appear to represent everyone in the invented population. Recidivism concerned a return to criminal behavior after an earlier offense or punishment, so the students checked both the criminal classification and the sequence of events. They corrected the labels before claiming that the count answered the question they had been assigned.
The students replaced the indiscriminate tally with separate categories based on what the fictional records explicitly established. They avoided choices that would skew the overall picture by retaining relevant cases instead of selecting only one outcome. A repeated noncriminal mistake did not become recidivism merely because it had happened twice, and a first criminal offense did not establish a return to crime. The revised summary stated those distinctions so readers could understand exactly what had and had not been counted.
Before you move on
Look away from the passage. Can you explain each focus word in your own words?
Original fictional passages for vocabulary practice.