This article illustrates using carbon emissions data in an introductory statistics assignment. The carbon emissions data has desirable characteristics including: choice of measure; skewness; and outliers. These complexities allow research and public policy debate to be introduced. (Contains 4 figures and 2 tables.)

Describes a class writing exercise for high school and college English classes (which functions well early in the first semester), which emphasizes a basic idea (that close inspection of a subject will reveal that there is a lot to say about it) by having students describe in detail a person's face, first as a class and then individually. (SR)