11 distribution of income

Distribution of Income

Specification

Architecture

• Networked: yes
  • Instructor-generated room
  • Instructor feedback for active participant count
  • Instructor controls for round advancement
• Reporting: no

Panel Breakdown

• Title panel
  • Text description of activity
  • Button to begin
• Main panel
  • Players are randomly assigned an occupation and income
  • Players are sorted into quintiles according to their income
  • When round 2 begins, the income of players in the upper 2 quintiles is reduced by $50
  • When round 3 begins, the income of players in the lower 2 quintiles is increased by $50
  • Elements
    • Current player's income amount
    • Text description of current player's occupation
    • Average of all players' % of total income
    • Current player's % of total income
    • Text reflecting current player's income quintile
    • Distribution graphs (one graph shared by current and any/all previous rounds)
    • Quintile table (distinct table for current and any/all previous rounds)

Wireframe

Needs

• Content
  • Short activity description
  • Extended activity description
  • Activity instructions
  • Equation for income distribution
  • Equation for modifying distribution in round 2
  • Equation for modifying distribution in round 3
• Design assets
  • None
• Open questions

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Original Description

Students engage in a simulation to explore how productivity influences the distribution of income and how government policy influences the redistribution of income.

We want to create a shared online worksheet like the one below where students can enter in their data and have it tabulate the results.

The shared worksheet would then be able to generate a Lorenz curve based on the data like the one below.

There should be a static URL so that the class can reference this data later on. As far as we're concerned, this can be a random string.

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Notes from Mike & Z

• Labels: spreadsheet, chart, reporting?
• This is the only activity with persisted data
• Approximately how much data will students be entering here? (This has some bearing on whether URL serialization is feasible.)

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Kickstart Note

• Networked
• Each table is filled by students at a physical group of tables.
• May need to add/remove/set number of tables.