Fall 2000
   Student Final Reports

Final Report from St. Barnabas Elementary School Bronx, New York, USA
Final Report from Hamilton Junior High School Hamilton, Texas, USA
Final Report from Trinity Anglican School Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Final Report from Three Oaks Middle School Dyersburg, Tennesee, USA
Final Report from Churchville Middle School Elmhurst, Illinois, USA
Final Report from Manlapan Englishtown Middle School Manalapan, New Jersey, USA
Final Report from PS/MS 20 Bronx, New York, USA
Final Report from St. John Bosco School Parma, Ohio, USA
Final Report from James F. Doughty School Bangor, Maine, USA
Final Report from Tulelake High School, Tulelake, California, USA
Final Report from Watchung Hills Regional High School, Warren, New Jersey, USA
 

St. Barnabas Elementary School Genetic Report:

We used Microsoft Excel to help us analyze the results. We found the following: 1. 85% of our survey had free earlobes. The ranges for the reporting schools were from 43% to 85%. 2. 51% of our survey had white forelocks. The ranges of all schools were from 2% to 51%. We were the highest. Most schools were lower, in the single digits. I believe this result was an error on our part. I don't believe the students understood what a white forelock was. 3. 42% of our survey had dimples. The ranges for all the schools were 25% to 64%. 4. 52% of our survey had straight thumbs. The ranges for all the schools were from 31% to 76%. 5. 56% of our survey had straight pinkies. The ranges for all schools were from 18% to 77%. There must be some error here in the reporting, the difference in the range is quite high. 6. 17% of our survey had mid-digit hair. The ranges for all the schools ranged from 14% to 86%. We don't know what accounts for the difference.
 

Human Genetics

We as a class answered the questions on the site and here they are...

Our class was able to complete this project because each of us worked together to finish within the amount of time given.

The most important new procedure we learned was to survey ourselves before we survey anyone else. We also learned that we should only count each person once, so asking if the individual had participated became very important.

Answering that we successfully completed the project with ease, if asked about the outcome.

I would survey more individuals if I were given the chance to perform this project again.

If I could speak to the project leader I would suggest that he/she list more dominant traits with which to survey individuals.

The results of this project did not meet our expectations because we predicted that there would be more color-blind individuals surveyed.

To analyze the data, we added all of the people surveyed to achieve an overall total and added the totals of each student together for each trait to achieve those totals.

The frequency range of dominant traits is 65%.

Yes. Because the trait is dominant, there is a higher chance of a person inheriting the trait.

It is important to note that this survey is a more accurate reflection of the population of the USA, than Israel or Australia. This is because both these countries have data from only one area in the countries and this may be biased because of a cultural majority/minority in the surveyed population. 
For the purpose of this report, we have included all the USA data under one total. 



Earlobes:Attached or Free? Figure 1.

It would appear that both Australia and USA have a similar proportion of the population with free earlobes - approximately 64% and 66% respectively - while Israel has less than half the population - 44% with free earlobes. This is illustrated in Figure 1 below. 

White Forelock:With or Without? 
While all surveyed countries showed a low population with a white forelock, it was interesting to notice that this time Israel and Australia showed similar proportions 98.7% and 97.9% respectively, and the USA was significantly lower with 82.7% of people with no white forelock. 

Dimples: With or Without? 

Dimples in populations reflected the trend of the Forelocks, with Israel and Australia closest in results with 36.9% and 35.3% of the population respectively, having dimples. The USA was slightly higher with 41.9% of the population having dimples. 

Thumb:Straight or Curved? 
This was an interesting reversal of the above trend with Australia and the USA close. 48.9% of Americans and 45.1% of Australians having straight thumbs. There is a significant increase in Israelis having straight thumbs - 69%.This is illustrated below. 

Pinky:Straight or bent? 
These finger results reflect the same values as the thumb, so that Australia and the USA are fairly similar (53.6% and 58.4%) of populations with straight pinkies; while Israel again has a higher proportion of straight "pinkied" people -66.7% 

Mid-digital hair:With or Without? 
This was a surprising result. We thought that as this characteristic related to fingers, we would find similar things to the results in the above two. However, it was Australia that was significantly different from the other two countries this time. This is demonstrated on the graph below. 

Colour Blindness:Yes or No? 
We didn't think many people were colour blind, so we thought all the countries would be pretty even, and they were. The USA had the highest proportion of colour blindness, but even so, more than 95% of the population are not colour blind.The results were Israel 97.2% and Australia 97.4% - very similar, and approximately 2% lower was the USA with 95.1% - not colour blind. 

General Conclusions: 
It would appear that there are some genetic differences between different countries and different races of people. However the multicultural nature of the three countries surveyed, would probably mean that many characteristics are different from what might have been found, before so much migration occurred. 
Finger shapes and ear lobe attachment, in Israel, seem to differ from those of the USA and Australia. Australians had less mid-digital hair than the other two countries, while the USA had more people with a white forelock than the other two countries. Not many people were colour blind in any of the three countries.

Our 8th grade class enjoyed doing this project. It fit well into our curriculum as we were studying genetic traits when we found this site.

We learned that when an experiment is conducted there is a lot of work involved with it. We had to administer the survey to our entire student body. This also meant that we had to be sure that the students understood what each trait meant. Then we had to sort and tally all the information that was gathered and finally we analyzed all that data that we had.

We had expected the dominant trait to be just that. However, it surprised us that this was not always true every time. Some recessive traits seemed to be the "dominant" one.

We decided that there is not a "norm" for traits based on any particular population. The differences could be because of changes in the genes over many generations.

The results of our data are as follows: Free earlobes 61% White forelock w/o 67% Dimples 57% Curved thumb 63% Pinky straight 60% Digital hair w/o 63%

Thank you for allowing us to be a part of this project.
 
 

We at Churchville Middle School enjoyed being part of the genetics online project. It fit right with what we are studying in our 8th grade science class. It was fun to survey all of our classmates and find out who had what trait. If you had had more time, it would have been interesting to check on how these traits showed up in our families.

Our analysis of the data showed that dominant doesn't always mean that that is the trait that will be in the majority of people. The way we handled analyzing all the data is to break into groups and work with the data from just one trait. Then we displayed our results on the board for all the classes to see.

These are the results of our data analysis:

Trait Dominant Recessive Earlobes Free - 67% Attached - 33% Dimples Yes - 78% No - 22% Thumb Straight - 51% Curved - 49% Pinky Straight - 58% Bent - 42% White Forelock Yes - 16% No - 84% Mid-digit hair Yes - 50.5 No - 49.5 Colorblindness No - 98% Yes - 2%

We have learned that in some cases, the recessive trait is shown with about the same frequency as the dominant. For example, the average percentage of people with curved thumbs( the recessive trait) is about 49%. Some traits, though, have a very low frequency, such as the white forelock, which few people in the survey have, although it is the dominant trait. But for several traits, the frequency showed that the dominant trait is the one that is shown in the majority of the people surveyed. Since colorblindness is a sex linked trait, it is not very common in the population, but is more common among males. The gender percentages of the people surveyed would definitely affect the outcome of this trait.

It was most interesting to see how the traits were represented in the different schools and the schools in the foreign countries. There are many similarities among all the schools.

Our suggestion about this project would be to shorten the time for the survey and definitely lengthen the time to analyze the results. One week is not enough time, especially since there were a lot of interuptions to our class schedules within this week.

We are looking forward to doing more of these online projects.
 
 

Our school enjoyed doing this genetics project. The most important thing we learned by doing this project was that even though a trait's recessive in MEMS, the same trait may not be somewhere else. For example in RI, mid-digit hair is both since the total is split even, but in MEMS, mid-digit hair is recessive.

We used a lot of math to compare the results of all the schools. We used adding, subtracting, averaging and finding percentages. We first compared results by creating averages for the schools in Australia, Marlboro NJ, Israel, and ourselves. We had some interesting results.

The information that we found on earlobes was that in Israel, only 44% for the dominant trait (free hanging earlobes) while the other schools' percentages were 64% and higher. We found it interesting that for white forelocks Israel had 1%, Australia had 2%, Marlboro had 0% and we, Manalapan, had 34%!! We don't think that they knew how to recognize the trait. For dimples, there is no significant difference between schools. In all schools but Australia, a straight thumb appears to be dominant. For the pinky, the results varied about 20% for each other among the schools. The mid-digit hair reluts were interesting because the trait was equally shown and not shown in Marlboro. We found that color-blindness was not dominant in most students.

For this genetics project, we also compared our results to the total averages for all the results posted. We found that Manalapan was above the total average for having free hanging earlobes, white forelocks, dimples, and bent thumbs.

free lobes w/forelock w/dimples straight thumbs Manalapan 74% 34% 45% 74% Total Averages 65% 16% 41% 48%

We found that Manalapan is below average for attached lobes, bent thumbs, bent pinkies and mid-digit hair.

attached lobes bent thumbs bent pinkies mid-digit hair Manalapan 26% 26% 38% 36% Total Averages 35% 52% 43% 41%

These are the results we found for dominant vs. recessive traits for Manalapan Englishtown Middle School compared to the total averages. Our results mostly matched our expectations.

If we could talk to the project leader about this project, we would suggest more accurate links and more information about what is being surveyed. explaining the traits better would be helpful. we enjoyed it alot and would do it again.
 
 

Final Report from PS/MS 20:

The results of this project are due to the combined efforts of two classes. Both classes agree that they were able to finish the project. Different groups of students were assigned different tasks such as surveying, recording, and counting. The testing for the different traits was conducted on all the 5th and 6th grade students in the school library.

We learned many things as a result of this project. The most important new idea was learning about different recessive and dominant traits and how to identify them. We also learned that although we may look differently we can have similar traits even though we are not related by blood. We learned how important teamwork is to a project, how to take a survey, and how to organize and analyze the data.

We think the project was successful because we were able to identify the different traits in our population. We also compared our finding to the findings of the other participants and found the results to be pretty similar. The trait that showed the largest difference in trend was the thumb. Two thirds of the students in our population have the dominant trait for straight thumbs compared to only one half the number for the whole project. To analyze the large quantity of data we totaled all the columns from the spreadsheet and set formulas to calculate the %s for both the total group and our individual group. In looking at the data, we found that the dominant trait did not always occur the most times. Four of the six traits that we analyzed had more occurrences of the recessive trait than the dominant trait. We found that our 5th and 6th grade students had occurrences of more recessive traits than dominant traits. Although we may come from various countries and we are culturally different, our test results show that we have common dominant and recessive traits.

If we could change the project we would add more time. We could use the time to analyze, graph and compare the data. We would also like to test for other traits such as eye color, and the size of our hands and feet.
 
 

St. John Bosco School Parma Heights, Ohio Eighth Grade

Our class was able to complete the Human Genetics Project becasue we had covered the topic of Modern Genetics in our science class. We were given a survey dat collection form to complete as a homework assignment. Once the data was submitted we were able to compare our data to the data of other schools.

This project was an exercise in unity. It taught us how much we have in common with people from around the world. The completion of the Human Genetics Project taught our class that the percentages of genetic features were about the same from around the world.

Given the chance to do this project again, instead of having the students fill our a gene survery of family and friends, we would have had the web site post an on-line survery for anyone who visited the site to complete.

The one suggestion to improve the project would be to shorten the duration of the project, thereby allowing the results to be reviewed and analyzed in a more timely manner. Overall, the results of the project did match our expectations because the dominant traits had the highest percentages and were proportional to the results from the people that we had surveyed.

To analyze the large quantity of data, the class was broken up into small groups consisting of about five students. The students looked at a group of schools and compared their data to St. John Bosco School's data/ As a result of the comparisons, we were abel to establish a relationship between teh relative occurrence of a traint and dominance. The majority of the time, the dominant trait occurred with higher frequency. We determined that the frequency range of the dominant trait was in the 45 to 50 percent range.

Red-green color blindness is a sex-linked trait. A male receiving one colorblind gene will be colorblind. In order for a female to be colorblind, she must receive two colorblind genes. While completing the on-line colorblind test, a male student learned that he was colorblind. This was a example of a real life application of science. The students enjoyed the scientific yet simple approach to human genetics.
 
 

According to the data collected in the “Worldwide Search for the Dominant Trait”, things are not always as they seem. The results of the project did not match our expectations, it was the exact opposite. Although one would expect that the dominant trait would appear more often, it turned out the ratios of dominant to recessive were favoring the recessive trait in all of the traits but one, the earlobes. Because of that, we concluded that most people have the recessive trait, rather than dominant.

The most important thing we learned was how to use a Punnett square. It is very useful and helps us to more fully understand human genetics. If someone asked us about the project, we would tell them that it was very fun and we learned a lot from it.If we could speak to the project director, we would tell him that they should give a wider range of traits to survey with. Eye color and hair color would be two.

We also concluded that dominant traits are not always the most common in a population. This would happen because of changes in a gene pool over time with different populations inter-breeding. We think that the earlobe has been around longer because the percent of dominant people is higher and closer to the 3:1 ratio we expected. This may have happened in our population with many other traits, traits that we didn’t look for, as well as the data we collected.

The frequency range of the traits were as following:

Free earlobe 30%

White Forelock -68.2%

Dimples -17.4%

Straight thumb -1%

Straight pinky -16.8%

Mid-digit hair -15%

A possible genotype for an individual with a free earlobe(dominant trait) may look like this; EE or Ee. However, for an individual with an attached earlobe (recessive trait) , the only possible genotype is ee. This concludes our report on “the Worldwide Search for the Dominant Trait”.
 

Tulelake High School’s Final Report

We enjoyed participating in the project immensely. We learned more about genetics and learned the usefulness of the chi sq. analysis. We saw how our classes’ dominant and recessive characteristics compare to that of different schools. We learned many new things about ourselves as well as others. We learned about the power of spreadsheets for number crunching. Our classes found it interesting to look at other schools introductions. If we do this again, we’d like to see more people represented from around the world.

For our percents of white forelock we had 6.25% compared to others, which had 13.87%. We figured that not very many people have white forelocks; and that each of us is unique in our own way (especially Ross with his white forelock, and Melissa’s thumb, and Brenda’s smile and earsJ and all of the rest of them as well). Our thumbs we found were kind of the same as other schools; our straight thumbs percent was 50% and the others were 49.45%. Some characteristics that match national averages were similar to us. One interesting observation was that people with dominant characteristics are more likely to have other dominant characteristics and vice versa with recessive.

We would like to thank you for this opportunity to participate in this project.

Final Report, Watchung Hills Regional High School

They say "The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost." We at Watchung Hills have believed that our (in some ways stressful)
efforts to contribute to this were not made in vain. This project was able to give a gift to the students that is solemn learned early on until it’s too late, that results only
come to those who are willing to work for them. This has been a rewarding process for all of us in reasons that will soon be mentioned.

The Genetics project was a joint effort made in part by two classes that were separated by a large block of time. Working together to complete our findings together
rather than separately was a major undertaking in itself. In order to do this each class had to individually survey people and later meet together to discuss our
findings. This for the students was a valuable lesson in communication as we ran into some trouble on agreeing how we are to represent the data.

The actual survey planning tested the facilitator’s ability to organize a mass of bodies to work and cooperate as one with out anarchy. For the freshman class this
brought the genetics project briefly away form the world of science into real life business skills. In order to make this project reach its full potential we had to
organize efficient committees where the students would learn to work not only together in a committee, but with partners as well. The students then would later
consult with the facilitator. This was a valuable lesson in teaching responsibility to the students.

The format of the survey was based on a chart each individual was to check out. The columns were labeled as either yes/no, straight/bent while each row was
labeled with the dominant trait, the bottom allowed the students to add the total of how many dominant traits they had opposed to recessive. This original format was
made to convenience both those who participated in the survey and those who were to later on tabulate the results. These forms were distributed among specific
classes. However, as careful planned as this was there were some cooperation issues among the surveyed. Both classes however felt they surveyed enough people
to get the needed results.

We organized the data at first gathered by trait, dominant and recessive and a percentage was resulted. When viewing the site however, we did as needed and
counted each individual’s answer into a tally. We have completed the requirements for the public project, but the students themselves have taken a great enough
interest to attempt a visual representation of dominance vs. recessives through charts. This process has taken the majority of time completing this for the data was
checked manually and several recounts were issued to make sure the results in themselves were true and not fabricated.

It should be understood that at the time the project was being executed we had no present knowledge of genetics. Before starting the survey, in the planning phase,
we have searched over the internet about each specific trait weather they were dominant or recessive. We had some general knowledge on the subject,
Unfortunatley at the time, general knowledge was all that we relied on when hypothesizing. When we viewed that a trait was dominant we had jumped to the
conclusion that it would appear more than the recessive trait. To our surprise when reviewing our survey data that the dominant trait rarely appeared at all as in the
white forelock, dimples, and mid-digit hair. The frequency of the dominant trait was 54%

We compared the findings to other schools for we were in doubt that our results were to be trusted. Apparently even schools such as those from other regions and
even in Israel resulted in the same peculiar findings. It has been decided that the seemingly inexplicable conclusion of recessive’s over dominant genes in some traits
would prevail. That was not an anomalous error in data collection we took a closer look and saw that dominance was not an isolated area where only one place
would have a certain combination of these traits. This gave us a better understanding of the unity of mankind as a whole and that we had more similarities in traits as a
whole rather than scrutinizing the differences of individuals.

It wasn’t enough to just accept the facts of the recessive over dominance conclusion we had grown so attached to the problem itself that our curiosity soon got the
better of us. A recent lesson in Mendelin Genetics put our curious minds at ease. It later been understood by the students that the dominance over recessive
condition only indefinitley applies to a first generation monohybird or dihybrid cross, the surpassing of a dominant gene is possible through several heterozygous
blends spanning a lot more than one generation. Those teachings a long with the projects gave us a way to apply crosses to everyday situations, almost as if giving
young people the power to foresee the future of a trait whether it is meant to emerge or not.

Over all, this project has given us all the benefits of communication, teamwork, the sparking of interests, research and reasoning skills, as well as lessons in efforts to
achieving deadlines. We may have come across communication problems, but that was all character building and we feel we have grown not only as scientists, but
also as human beings as we learned to appreciate each other’s work individually and as a contribution as a whole. If there was anyway we could have done a better
job, it would have to be conducting the survey with a higher number of people next time, and it wouldn’t hurt if we were more informed about the subject. So, when
doing a project that was to learn about the genes of the human race we have become more human ourselves and we thank you.

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