Human Genetics

Spring 2001
Final Reports

Final Report from Jackson Hole High School, Jackson Hole, WY, USA
Final Report from South O'Brien High School, Paulina, IA, USA
Final Report from Willowbrook School, Glenview, Illinois, USA
Final Report from Pascack Valley High School, Hillsdale, NJ, USA
Final Report from Luis Munoz Marin Middle School, Newark, New Jersey, USA
Final Report from St. Hilary Elementary School, Fairlawn, OH, USA
Final Report from Prospect Park School, Prospect Park, NJ, USA
Final Report from Dubois Middle School, Dubois, IA, USA
Final Report from Sahuaro High School, Tucson, AZ, USA
Final Report from Westfield High School, Chantilly, VA, USA
Final Report from Walnut Springs Middle School, Westerville, OH, USA
Final Report from Woodlynde School, Stratford, PA, USA
Final Report from Lake Bluff Middle School, Lake Bluff, IL, USA
Final Report from Wescott School, Northbrook, IL, USA
Final Report from SCEGGS, Darlinghurst, Sydney, Australia
Final Report from Herricks Middle School, Albertson, NY, USA
Final Report from Ridgefield Park Jr. Sr. High School, Ridgefield Park, NJ, USA
Final Report from West Side High School, Newark, NJ, USA
Final Report from Tamarac Middle School, Troy, NY, USA
Final Report from Tigerton Middle School, Tigerton, WI, USA
Final Report from Seoul American Middle School, Seoul, South Korea
Final Report from Carusi Middle School, Cherry Hill, NJ, USA
Final Report from ADM Middle School, Adel, IO, USA
Final Report from Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire, IL, USA
Final Report from North Cumberland Middle School, North cumberland, RI, USA
Final Report from Washington Middle School, Carlstadt, NJ, USA
Final Report from Mesa Vista Elementary School, El Paso, TX, USA
Final Report from Marist High School, Bayonne, NJ, USA
Final Report from St. Mary Byzantine Elementary School, Cleveland, OH, USA
Final Report from John F. Long School, Phoenix, AZ, USA
Final Report from Auckland Normal Intermediate School, Aukland, New Zealand
Final Report from Stockbridge Middle School, Stockbridge, MI, USA
Final Report from Livingston Junior High School, Livingston, TX, USA
Final Report from Johnston Middle School, Johnston, IA, USA
Final Report from Beck Middle School, Cherry Hill, NJ, USA
Final Report from San Martin de Tours, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Final Report from Finneytown Middle School, Cincinnati, OH, USA
Final Report from Emerson High School Program, Emerson, NJ, USA
 
 

The kids in my life science class were responsible for collecting data and tabulating the results themselves. This was quite a challenge as many of the students have special educational considerations and this class was designed to meet their needs. This was indeed a major accomplishment for these guys! When we went over the data together as a class we realized that our results were off just a little but not significantly to really skew our data points. We discussed what possible things could have happened and here's what the kids wrote or said:
"I got a little confused on how to explain the different traits to the kids we were asking so I'm not sure if they understood me or not"
"I know that I forgot to put a check by the trait because I was trying to get a small group's data all at once and it wasn't organized enough for me to keep track"

They also said the following about the project:
We now know that the numbers have to be exact in order for the results to be as correct as possible...
Next time, we would go slower, ask more people and put our tallies in the right places...
Our results appeared as though some of the dominant traits we were looking for actually appeared recessive in the student population we asked... (example: White Forelock/dominant only 6 out of 152 and no white forelock/recessive 146 out of 152). The kids almost wondered if that was a mistake on the survey data collection form.

1. For the most part, our class completed the project as designed. We surveyed and accounted for each student, but we could not survey all the traits at the same time. After the first survey, we had to wait a couple days to obtain color blindness testing sheets before we could test that trait.

2. We realized the importance of counting everyone and making sure not to count anyone twice.

3. The outcome of this project was great. Almost everyone in the high school participated in answering the survey. Everyone found the project interresting and fun.

4. We would conduct the survey's on the same day so all the same people would answer. We would be more organized and explain the project more carefully to the participants.

5. If I could speak to the project leader I would suggest to make the instructions easier to follow. When writing the description it would also be helpful to have a detailed description of what we are looking for. Often times when we went to the web site it was difficult to work on the site, so another suggestion would be to make it easier to move about the web site.

6. We really did not know what to expect, so we had no expectations.

7. We divided up all of our school's classes during one class period and each took a class or two. We then came together during our class period and shared the results that we had.

8. The frequency rate of the dominate traits was 57%.

9. There was no relationship between the traits and dominance. It was a mixture of both.

10. We learned that the person who is color blind usually has one parent who is color blind. It also tended to be found in males more than females.

This is a combination of our observations and conclusions: This project was a very educational experience that we  enjoyed. the project was well organized and encouraged  kids to learn more about different traits.Our class was able  to complete the data because it was so easy to  accomplish. All we had to do was ask people questions,  which was fun, and convert our information into percents.  Then we made graphs to go along with our information.  Each of us compared our school to at least one other  school and then we compared those to see if our school  was the same as other schools. One of our students  actually totaled up 64 schools or 14, 634 people. That  really helped us see how accurate our results were. Our  percents were sometimes within one or two percents of the  big total. The biggest difference was only 9%. We had 2%  white forelocks and the big total was 11 %. By doing bigger  numbers, we figured that we would get closer to the best  answer, but even the small number we surveyed, 96  people, was pretty accurate. Spread sheets were  important to compare data of other schools accurately. Some of the traits were more subjective, like thumbs. The  trait sheets helped for this. It was harder to tell earlobes,  so the count on these could be less accurate. It was easy  to tell white forelock and colorblindness, though. During this project we learned a number of things.The  most important thing we learned from this project was the  fact that compared to recessive traits, the dominant trait  isn’t always the majority. I also learned how to convert  numbers into percents so I could see how my school did  compared to other schools. Some of our predictions were correct. Almost all of us  believed that the dominant trait would be the most frequent.  But, there seems to be no relationships between how often  a trait occurred and dominance. Some of the traits wee  dominant and occurred more often but in some cases the  recessive trait occurred more often. We also found that  red/green color blindness is found in males more often  than females. In order for a boy to have it, his mother  would have to be a carrier as well as his father. Even then,  there is only a 25% chance. The highest range we got for a dominate trait was for color  blindness, 95% and the lowest was 2 % for white forelock.  This was a range of 93 %. This was from our survey  results. We also found that some schools had many more  white forelocks and color blindness and we were surprised  by that, but when we took the big sample, the percentage  was much closer to ours.  If I did this project again, I would do it basically the same. I  might survey more people. I would tell the project leader to  change the age limitation range and to have more traits to  compare. Also we were a little rushed for time, but we only  meet once a week.
THIS PROJECT WAS A GREAT EXPERIENCE!

Earlobes- We expected 75% of the people to have free earlobes, the actual % was 64% so we were a little lower than expected. Perhaps there were some free earlobes that were mistaken for attached when people were being counted.

White Forelock- We expected 75% of the people to have it, but we got only 11%. Maybe the white forelock does not show up until you reach a certain age and maybe many of the people that were surveyed were students and were too young to show that trait. Perhaps somewhere in the world there is a population where all of the people have white forelocks and so this would upset the differential (in other words, perhaps we did not have a random sampling). Is it possible that this dominant trait, the white forelock, does not show up when it should? And also when people dye their hair the white forelock would be hidden. Perhaps some of the people had such a short hair that the forelock might not have been visible.

Dimples- The dominant trait is the presence of dimples. We expected 75% should have dimples, we got 44%. Maybe people who have dimples got interviewed and weren’t smiling, dimples are easily hidden.

Thumb- We expected 75% to have a straight thumb, but we got 50%. The interviewers may not have been sure how curved, curved should be mistook straight for curved.

Pinky- We expected 75% to have straight pinkies, but we got 58%. The interviewer could have again mistook a straight pinky for a bent pinky. The pinkies were really straight and said that they were bent.

Mid digit hair- We expected 75%, but we got 42%. Perhaps people burned or shaved their finger hair. Or the hair was so small or so blond that it was unable to be noticed during the interview

Color Blindness-colorblindness is a recessive sex-linked trait. It is more common in males because it is carried on the X sex chromosome. We were not surprised that only a small percentage of people are colorblind. We have 2 male teachers at our school who are colorblind.

The way an experiment is conducted is so important. The number of people that are sampled can affect the outcome by not giving a clear picture of what is going on, so the more people that are sampled the better. When sampling, each person needs to be asked questions in the same way for it to be a fair experiment. Some of the students questioned did not have a clear understanding of how to judge if they had each trait or they could not identify if other students had certain traits. This made collecting very lengthy and tedious. If we had good, clear pictures of each dominant and recessive trait that could be shared with the students it could make for easier idenification.

Before data was collected, we thought all of the dominant traits would appear more frequently then the recessive traits. To our surprise it turned out to be the opposite except for the earlobes. After seeing the results we decided to analyze the data again by making graphs to see the data more clearly. Nothing changed, so we think the results are the way they are because the majority of the surveyed population is hispanic mixed in with a little African-American. We tried to find other groups of people to survey to see if the results would change but we had no such luck because we live in a very segregated area.

The frequency range for the dominant traits was 66%-.9%=65.1% We didn't notice any relationship between the trait occurance and the dominance except that it didn't seem to matter. Colored blindness seems to be passed down through fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, etc. to their sons but not to their daughters, so we think this means males are more likely to be colored blind.

Greetings again from St. Hilary School! We completed this project with almost no difficulties. We learned a lot about genes and dominant and recessive traits. The outcome of this project was a bit different than we expected. Instead of having dominant traits appear more, it turned out to be vice-versa, with recessive traits appearing much more.

If we were to do this project again, we would expand the number of people included in the project and make sure each tally was accurate and accounted for. One thing we would change if we were in charge of this project would be to add more traits to be surveyed.

We had a great time completing this project, and hope to take part in it again next year.

St. Hilary Sixth Graders

The three eighth grade science classes of Prospect Park School really enjoyed working on the genetics project In addition, by participating in this project, we added to our knowledge about dominant and recessive traits.

1. We feel that the class comprehended the survey and answered the questions with good understanding.
2. We learned that each person was different in his or her own way.
3. We would say the project had a good outcome. Everything went as planned.
4. If we had the chance to do this differently, we would also test if a person has or does not have a widow's peak.
5. We have no suggestions for the project leader. We thought the genetics project was planned very well.
6. No, the results did not match our expectations. Most eighth graders had recessive traits, when we expected them to have mostly dominant traits.
7. To analyze the quantity of the data, we made three committees. Each committee tallied the genetic traits for their class.
8. The frequency range for the dominant traits came out to be 50%.
9. There really isn't a relationship between how often a trait occurred and dominance because we saw both dominant and recessive traits in students.
10. We discovered that no one in our sample had red-green color blindness. However, we do know that red-green color blindness occurs more frequently in males.

Our project involved surveying everyone in our school for data and we submitted the results. Some of the things we learned from this project were: how to make graphs and do calculations using Microsoft EXCEL, people have different traits, some people have a white forelock(dominant trait) but most people don't have that trait, DNA controls traits, very few people are color-blind, and working together helps get things finished faster. The project was fun and we learned about other people's traits including the traits we have in common. If we were to improve our study, we would ask more questions, check more traits, survey a larger group, and work with different partners. Our goal was to find out how many people had each of the traits and we accomplished our goal. In addition to achieving our goal, we also learned about dominant and recessive traits. If we could improve anything, we would like to have more time to study results, survey more traits, and look at more than one generation in our survey.

My main purpose for participating in this collaborative project was to get my special education students to use their counting and observations skills and to interact with the mainstream population is a fun activity. All three goals were successful!

I have a class of 10 math students, each was responsible for completing four surveys. (Originally I had planned to have a over 100 surveys completed---way over ambitious on my part!)Our survey numbers are small but again that wasn’t my main objective for participating. Out of the 6 traits we measured only two of the dominant traits (straight pinky 56% and free earlobes 68%) were actually found in higher numbers.

This was a great “start” for my special students in collaborative projects. They really thought it was cool that we were participating with students from all around the world. I loved watching them interact with the students from the mainstream art class....all the students were so gracious and willing to help them read and fill out their tally sheets. (I had created a special tally sheet with pictures, so reading was at a minimum--but I still appreciated the help and kindness of the regular students.) I initially planned to use the data in spreadsheets and do a bit of graphing work, but we ran out of time. I plan to work on this or another project in the future.

Thank you for the opportunity to participate.

Earlobes(free) 64 36
White Forelock( yes) 11 89
Dimples( yes) 43 56
Thumb(straight) 50 49
Pinky(bent) 42 57
Mid Digit Hair(yes) 41 58
Colorblindness (no) 95 4

Final Report of Westfield High School
 

We enjoyed a great deal the opportunity to participate in this project. We were able to determine that sometimes the most common trait is not always dominant.

The data was analyzed using the Excel program and the above results were obtained.
Surprisingly to us some of the dominant traits were less common than the recessive ones. We expected this result for the white forelock since it is rare, but were surprised that the number with dimples was not higher. We suspect that maybe some people weren't sure what dimples were. We were also surprised to find that the digit hair was also not higher. We suspect that maybe people just don't like to tell the truth about that trait.
The shape of the thumb and pinky were pretty much 50-50. This tells us that these traits are pretty common in both forms.

When we looked at the data on colorblindness it was obvious that it must be sex linked.
Only two of the people who are colorblind are female and both of them have a colorblind parent. We are surprised that both girls do not have colorblind fathers however since this would be the only way they could get two colorblind genes. That was the biggest surprise we found.

This was a great project and we enjoyed it a great deal.

The class from Walnut Springs Middle School had no problems with completing the project, because of excellent student cooperation, and it really wasn’t very hard. What we think was the most important thing that we learned is that, cooperation is very important in the scientific community, and in life. One example is that if only our classes did the test, we might get totally different results, then doing the same test on a much larger scale. We thought that of course we would have said, the dominant traits would have been found the most. We really had no problems, so that we wouldn’t do anything differently. We had no problems with this, and whenever we had a problem or question, Neil Holzman (project leader) was ready and willing to help us, and we always got an answer in a day. We didn’t see anything strange in the data, in that we didn’t see that that wasn’t normal, like a dominant trait being recessive. We analyzed our data in Excel, with the auto-sum command to quickly and easily analyze the data. We see that the dominant traits orcurred more, and the recessive occoured less. We expected that, and that’s what we saw. We would like to conclude our letter by thanking all the other schools, and saying thanks and great job to project leader Neil Holzman.

We learned that most people do not have the dominant trait.

No white forelocks, no dimples, straight pinky and finger hair were the recessive traits that were more common.

Dominant traits can be common, but our survey showed a variety of traits, dominant and recessive show up.

Our class was able to complete the project, but some had trouble with the graphing of results.

One of the other main things we learned was that there is a lot of people with many more interesting and unexpected traits than we thought possible

For the most part we would keep the project the same, except maybe involve more schools and choose really unique traits.

Most of us enjoyed the project. We appreciate the experience of participating in your project.
Sincerly,
Ms. Paul's 10th Grade
Biology class

1. Six classes of seventh grade science students were able to complete the project as it was designed. The directions were easy to follow, and most family members were eager to be surveyed. They also said that directions provided by their teacher made it easy to complete the project.

2. The most important concepts the students learned involved the last two questions. They learned how color-blindness and other sex-linked traits are inherited. In addition, they learned that a dominant trait is not necessarily the most common trait in a population.

3. In my classroom, the students enjoyed using this project to learn about many genetics concepts. They liked comparing their phenotpyes to their family and friends. Then, they speculated about their possible genotypes. They also enjoyed looking at the the letters of intro. and comparing their school day to schools in other countries.

4. If we did this project again, we would not do anything differently.

5. My students sometimes found that one family member had one earlobe that was attached and one that was free. We were not sure how to tally these people.

6. Before the project began, my students expected the dominant traits to be more frequent.

7. My students used many of the suggested questions provided in the web-site to analyze the data.

8. For the data we collected, the frequency range of the dominant traits was 34%.

9. There is not a relationship between how often a trait occurs and dominance.

10. When they examined their data, my students learned that men are more often red-green color blind than women are. Then, we used Punnett Squares and information about gender determination to show that women must inherit two recessive genes to be red-green color blind, where as men only need to inherit one recessive gene to be red-green color blind.

This is a combined report from the 11 students in SPIE  science/math class :   Our class was able to complete the task as it was  designed because we spent time looking at the data each  week and we looked at the traits as we did the project. We  also devoted time to completing the survey before the  deadline. Each of us interviewed enough people to =  exactly 100.   In our research, in the fifth grade, we found that dominant  traits aren't always the most frequent. This was not what  we expected. Out of the seven traits, five had more people  with recessive than dominant traits. This did not meet our  expectations, but it showed us that dominant is not the  same as frequent. Our range of dominant traits was from 2% for dominant  white forelock, to 98% for dominant non colorblindness.  That is 96% range. One of the ways we organized our data was to make a spreadsheet and then bar graphs. We  did our school, another school, and then a combined total  of over 14,000 surveys. We found that, although, we had  differences, we were pretty close. But we thought a bigger  amount was more accurate. If we had a chance to do this  project again, we would change the way the results were  put on the site. It should include in the chart whether  something was dominant and recessive. That got kind of  confusing.

Thanks for the project.

The Year 10 Science students enjoyed completing their survey and the most important thing that they learned was the need to be familiar with the characteristic being surveyed. This led to a discussion of how results could be skewed (particularly relevant because one of the girls contributed 30 results to our 131), how mistakes could arise from a manual tally) and the importance of the sample size. They decided that they would ask a greater variety of people if they were to do the sampling again and not just ask their families. We expected to see a world total for the results so that we could come to a conclusion about dominance of a gene. The various school results were too many and too different to work off and our own results certainly did not illustrate the expected ratios. The inheritance of colour blindness, however, was clearly shown. A suggestion from the students to the project leader was that the web site could be made less complicated eg.the colour blindness images were hard to access.

Written and submitted by Jacob Korder

1. Was your class able to complete the project as it was designed? Explain why or why not.

The class was able to complete the project as designed. The project was done as a lab. The students used the internet to access the Worldwide Genetics Project homepage to see what the different traits look like. Using what they saw, the students decided which variation of the trait they had. After every student had decided which variation they had for each of the triats a class total was determined. Eventually, the results from all of the classes were totaled together resulting in one number for each trait which included results from all of the classes who participated in the project.

2. What was the most important new idea or scientific procedure you learned by doing this project?

The most important new idea or scientific procedure that the students learned from this project is that it is sometimes more interesting for oneself to be part of the experiment, so to speak, than to read from textbooks. The students were having a fun and interesting experience by doing this project while they were still learning from it.

3. If someone asked you about the outcome of the project, how would you answer?

If somebody asked me about the outcome of the project, I would answer that it was probably surprising to some of the students when they saw the results. Many students probably thought that dominant traits were more common than recessive traits. They found out from this project that that is not always the situation.

4. If you had the chance to do this project again, what would you do differently?

If I had the chance to do this project again, I would want to do only one thing differently. The one thing which I would want to do differently would be to use different traits to be surveyed. It would be uninteresting to the students who previously participated if the same traits were used again.

5. If you could speak to the project leader, what suggestions for improvement would you offer?

If I could speak to the project leader, the suggestions which I would offer for imporvement would be to have the project leader compose a letter of introduction and a final report to be used as examples in the Discussion Area. I found that I had some difficulties writing the letter of introduction and this final report without first seeing examples. Should the project leader compose examples, the examples would be exactly how he or she wants them.

6. Did the results of your project match your expectations? Explain why or why not.

The results of the project matched the expectations of some students while the results of the project did not match the expectations of others. Some students hypothesized that dominant traits were more common than recessive traits. Other students hypothesized that dominant traits could be, but are not necessarly more common than recessive triats. The students who hypothesized that dominant traits are more common than recessive traits were proven wrong by the results of this project. For certain triats in this project, the number of individuals with the dominant trait was not as large as the number of those with the recessive trait.

7. What procedures did you use to analyze the large quantity of data?

The procedures that were used by students to analyze the large quantity of data was to use the computer. Using the computer enabled students to use a spreadsheet. The students used the data given on the Worldwide Genetics Project website in the form of a spreadsheet to total the data. Once the data was totaled, other students found the percentages of dominant traits showing and percentages of recessive traits showing. After this was completed, other students created bar graphs to show the difference between the number of individuals with the dominant trait and the number of individuals with the recessive trait for each trait which was surveyed.

8. What was the frequency range (highest% minus lowest%) of the dominant traits ?

The frequency range of the dominant traits was 85 percent.

9. Is there a relationship between how often a trait occurred and dominance? Explain.

In most of the traits that were surveyed, the number of individuals with the dominant trait is greater than the number of those with the recessive trait. There were a few traits in which the number of individuals with the dominant trait is smaller than the number of those with the recessive trait. One example of this is the trait of the White Forelock. There were 2025 individuals with a white forelock. This was 11 percent of the people surveyed for the white forelock trait. There were 16595 individuals without a white forelock. This is the recessive trait. Another trait in which the number of individuals with dominant traits is maller than the number of those with the recessive trait is the trait of dimples. The number of individuals with dimples is 8200. This is 44 percent of the people surveyed for this trait. The number of individuals without dimples is 10544. This is the recessive trait. Another trait in which the number of individuals with dominant traits is smaller than the number of those with the recessive trait is the trait of bent or straight pinkies. The number of individuals with a bent pinky is 7801. This is 42 percent of the people surveyed for this trait. There were 10575 individuals with a straight pinky. This is the recessive trait. Another example of this is in the trait of mid-digital hair. The number of individuals with mid-digital hair is 7680. This is 42 percent of the people surveyed for this trait. This is the dominant trait. The number of individuals without mid-digital hair is 10816. This is the recessive trait.

1. Was your class able to complete the project as it was designed? Explain why or why not.

Yes, we took results from both Miss Besler’s and Miss Go’s classes and analyzed them collectively. It took several class days to collaborate our thoughts. We gathered all the survey, then analyzed the data in our lab groups and shared it with the class to come up with our final conclusions.

2. What was the most important new idea or scientific procedure you learned by doing this project?

From doing this project, we learned that sometimes your expected results don’t match your observed results. We were also able to utilize our mathematical and graph-making skills in determining ratios and percentages for the individuals surveyed. Furthermore, this project was used as an introduction to genetics, so the students were able to learn that each characteristic they express comes from their parents.
 

3. If someone asked you about the outcome of the project, how would you answer?

We learned that there are numerous traits in every one of us. We gained a better understanding of how traits are inherited from generation to generation. We had different predictions at first, but then we were able to understand why dominant traits may or may not have occurred more often as compared to recessive traits.

4. If you had the chance to do this project again, what would you do differently?

We wished we were able to spend more time analyzing the project. In the future, we hope to survey more people ourselves so we may have better representation. We hope that we can possibly have a guest speaker come in and explain the benefits of doing such a survey and the outcome of the finalized human genetics project. It would be beneficial if each student had time to survey his / her entire family and maybe draw a pedigree for each trait, illustrating those who possessed the trait and who did not so they could see exactly where they inherited the traits from.
 

5. If you could speak to the project leader, what suggestions for improvement would you offer?

Reword the questions and make them easier. Have sample answers as students are doing the data analysis questions. Also maybe focus on the individual student, their parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, so that data is easier to analyze and compare.

6. Did the results of your project match your expectations?
Explain why or why not.

No our final results did not exactly match our initial observations. Initially, most people in the class believed that because a trait is “dominant”, it would automatically be the predominant characteristic in a population. We concluded that predicted results can never totally match expected results because we can not pick and chose what type of genes we are going to inherit (unless we clone).
 

7. What procedures did you use to analyze the large quantity of data?

We used the sample surveys from the project and then we collaborated our results with the other biology classes’ results. We determined ratios and percentages by using derived formulas. To visualize more easily, we were also able to produce bar graphs for each dominant and recessive traits.

8. What was the frequency range (highest % minus lowest %) of the dominant traits?

The frequency range of the dominant traits was 66 percent.

9. Is there a relationship between how often a trait occurred and dominance? Explain.

We were actually surprised that we didn’t find a closer relationship between how often a trait occurred and dominance. There are things that we don’t take into consideration that occurs during one’s lifetime- such as random mutation.

This was a very informative project that had a few more twists and turns than we expected. When we started the project, the four biology classes (grade 10 ) at West Side HS, Newark, NJ,intended to survey all the students in our school. The plan was to have each class responsible for a certain number of homerooms where the they would go and collect the data. We were not able to actually do the survey until the week that we had the HSPT test so we ended up only surveying 226 students, most of them in our biology classes. One of the things we would do if we did this kind of project again would be to check the school calendar so we could carry out our plan. We didn't do the colorblind part because we didn't have an easy way to check it. Some students plan to do this part as an independent project and they will use the color chart in their health text.
We were surprised that the expected dominant traits didn't come out as we thought they would; especially the white forelock. Even when we took informal surveys of people we saw in our community, the bus,and two malls, we did not observe dominance in white forelocks in any situation. When we discussed this we thought that our observations may have been altered because in our society today many people dye their hair so we weren't seeing the real deal.We also found that we needed to make some decisions about the traits that we didn't expect, for instance, some people only had one dimple; after disscusion we decided to count that as dominant. When we finished collecting our data, each class formed teams of four students each to analyze the data. This way we were able to check and see that the results were in agreement. The following traits agreed with the expectations: earlobes, straight pinky, mid-digit hair, but straight thumb, white forelock, and dimples had unexpected results. There did not seem to be a relationship between how often a trait occurred and its dominance. Students showed dominance in one trait, but were recessive in another traits. Further work needs to be done to find out why the resuts were very different than we expected.

Most of the students took the assignment seriously and brought home the chart and polled family members. Some asked school friends. Only a few teachers were asked. Students answered each question first about themselves and then asked others. The students were asked to only poll people who had not already been asked by someone else.

Most students thought this a fun and interesting thing to do and probably never thought about pinky shape of ear attachment before.

We took the color-blindness test only in class. Most were surprised to learn the extent of the limitations of a color blind person. One boy was color blind and was able to share his frustrations as an early elementary ed student when so many activities are color coordinated.

Possible project leader suggestion: It would have been nice if there had been a page I could have brought my middle school students to where they could have read about the project. The website was not written with a young reading audience in mind, which was fine...but I had to explain the premise.

This is the final report from Tigerton Middle School concerning the genetics project. The 8th grade at Tigerton Middle School was responsible for collecting data on the project. They each took 5 people and recorded their name so as not to record the same person twice. After looking over the data we were surprised by the results, mainly because not all the dominant traits were the most frequent. For one example, curved thumbs was recessive but it show up more frequently than sraight thumbs.

Our classes calculated the percentages of each trait for the Non USA schools and the East and West coast of the United States schools. When we were finished we compared the averages of the Non USA schools with the averages of the East and West coast combined. Then we looked at the East coast verses the West coast averages for comparison.

We discovered several things that we considered patterns. On the west coast, the most common traits were all dominant. On the east coast, the most common traits were all recessive. For the Non USA schools there were about the same amounts of dominant and recessive traits. There was no real difference between the Non USA schools and the US schools.

We did have some of our groups that disagreed with our findings. We concluded that with so many people doing this project and so we had so many different charts that is would be easy to make mistakes. We also learned that it takes a lot of work to calculate percentages and averages.

Some other thing that may have contributed to the differences was the sample size. It was large, but may have not been big enough to make statements like the “whole US”, “all Non USA schools” or “ all of the West coast states” and like that.

We also realized like in the case of our school. We were considered a Non USA school, but we are all US citizens. It is an American school on a military post. This fact may mess up looking at the US verses the Non US schools.

We enjoyed the project but it was a lot of work!

Students at Seoul American Middle School

The Human Genome Project has really helped us to understand how dominant and recessive genes are distributed among people and how these traits give us our unique appearance. Our class was able to complete this project because it was easy to enter our own data, and then to view the total data of other classes around the world. We conducted a similar survey of human traits in our science class. However, with only 25 students, our results couldn't really give us valid conclusions. Most of the people in our class thought that the dominant trait would always show up as the highest percent in a population. If we based our conclusions on the results of just our classroom data of only 25 students, it wouldn't be as convincing as having the data from a large sample like that in the Human Genome Project. We concluded both times, our class experiment and the Human Genome Project that the dominant trait is not always the highest percent in the population. This was different from what we thought at the beginning of the experiment. If we were to re-do this project, we would include even more traits that are determined by recessive and dominant genes. The website was easy to use and we have no suggestions for improvement. In this project we got to work like actual scientists by viewing a broader amount of data. Before, we were only able to base our conclusions on class data. To analyze the large quantity of data, we copied the data into Microsoft Excel, and used summation to get the totals. In the traits that we survey, the range of the appearance of the dominant trait was from a low of 5% to a high of 64%of the population. Consequently, the range of the appearance of the recessive trait was a low of 36% to a high of 95%. We learned that red-green colorblindness is a sex-linked trait. This means that the gene for the red-green colorblindness is carried on the X chromosome. This project has been a great learning experience for Carusi Middle School. It is a great idea to do science like a real scientist, sharing data all over the world. Thank you! Hopefully, we can participate in more projects like this next year.

Our class at Adel-DeSoto, Minburn was able to complete the project. We surveyed the whole sixth grade class. Each of us in the GATE class was in charge of helping the science classes conduct the survey. Our GATE class then compiled all the information. This took a lot of team work, checking and rechecking to make sure it was correct. We've learned many things while doing this project and it was a lot of fun. It was fun to look at the different traits and see if it was dominate or recessive. It really surprised us to see that sometimes the recessive gene showed up more. All the students found the color blind testing interesting. We also learned things about ourselves that surprised us and it made us want to learn more.

Our GATE class did some extra things. We did taste testing and then we checked our brothers, sisters, and parents. We always assumed everything tasted the same to all of us until we did tese tests. It really surprised us when some people could taste something bitter and the rest didn't taste anything at all. This was fascinating, escially when all of us were complaining how the paper tasted so bitter and one girl didn't taste a thing. She went home and tested her whole family and none of them could taste anything.

Thank you for providing us with this project, it has opened our eyes to the world of genetics!

We were able to complete the project as it was designed, including data collection, analysis, and reflection. This activity fit nicely with the work that we did in genetics this year.

It was interesting to be able to analyze "real" data from a very large sample size. In doing so, we were able to pick up some very interesting trends, the most notable of which was the way in which the dominant trait was not always the most prevalant trait (in fact it was often very rare). It was also interesting to note some traits that were extremely rare in our student population were more common in other schools around the world.

I would do this project again. In doing so, I would allow more time with my students for further extensions with the data analysis. I budgeted more than enough time at the beginning of the project, but ran out of time with some end of the year scheduling pressures. Because of these constraints, I was forced to guide the class discussions and analyze the data WITH the students, as opposed to having them work through the data on their own.

My only suggestion for this project would be an earlier date for the availability of the final data. I realize that this is dependent on everyone getting the information submitted on time, as well as the necessary time to process the data.

In general, this was a great experience.

Our class was able to finish the World Wide Search for the Dominant Trait as it was designed. This was possible because every person had access to the Internet at home. It was also possible because, every student in our class contributed to making this project successful. Another reason was that all the directions were very clear and if we had a question all we had to do was e-mail Neil Holzman, the director, and he would e-mail us back immediately. This project was fun and very easy to understand. The most important new idea that we learned was how to collect data and organize it so it could be submitted. We had never done this sort of Internet search before, and we learned a lot. Our students obtained experience in taking and giving surveys and putting together the data collected
We would say that this project was a success and that we were able to complete the task to compare the dominant traits throughout the world. We would also say that it was a good experience to meet new people all over the web. Another successful point to this project is we learned how to organize groups and divide certain tasks among ourselves, thus helping to expedite the project. However, we did not collect as much data as we could have.
If our class had the chance to do this project again We’d try to come up with a better introductory paragraph for our school so that it would have more detail about us. We would also try to collect more data from people in our school. However, we don’t believe that we needed to modify the general idea of this project. This is because it was a good learning experience. Also, our class succeeded in performing most of the required tasks. We would have surveyed more people, though.

We would suggest to the project leader that to improve this project, the website could’ve given the participants more background information on genetics. For example, they could have explained terms like dominant, recessive, and explaining each trait in more depth. This is basically the only thing that would need changes, other than this, the project was very educationally fulfilling.
This project met our highest expectations. It gave us a chance to explore many of the aspects of genetics and also allowed us the share our information with other schools and they had a chance to look at ours. During this project we also had an opportunity to learn about genetics outside of our schoolbooks.
We mainly used one procedure for analyzing the data. First, we added up the columns to find the total of dominant and recessive traits for each characteristic. Next, to analyze the data in a more extreme form, we made each of the total amounts for each trait (dominant and recessive) into a pie graph. Now, we had a visual way to observe the data. By visually seeing the results, of the project in graph form, we could more accurately compare the dominant and recessive traits especially because of the colors of the graph and percentages.
The highest percent of the dominant trait was 96% for not being colorblind. The lowest percent of the dominant trait was 11% for having a white forelock. The frequency range of the dominant traits was 85%.
There is a relationship between the number of times a trait occurs and it’s dominance in most cases. In this particular project the relationship didn’t always work out. The data did not always support the theory that the dominant would appear more often than the recessive trait. Four out of the seven traits had the dominant trait appear less than the recessive trait.
In this project we could see that color blindness is inherited but masked by the dominant trait of normal vision. Colorblindness is rarely expressed in most humans.

Grade 7 Life Science Class
North Cumberland Middle School
400 Nate Whipple Highway
Cumberland, RI 02864
401-333-6306

To complete our project, our class went through several steps to collect and organize our data. First, we filled out sheets witht he trait, dominant or recessive and a tally for them. We assked our friends, neighbors, family, teachers and just about anybody who had time to answer our survey. After that, we got all of our information together and divided into sveral groups for each trait. The groups made posters for their trait and we went around to each poster to put the tally from our own survey sheet. In the end our wonderful teacher collected all the posters from each class and found the total number of dominant and recessive traits. After that happened, we came out with a successful project!
One reason this project was a good idea is that one can learn many things from it. I learned more about how traits were inherited and dominant and recessive traits than any texrtbook could teach me. It was a great way to learn firsthand what heredity is all about. It also taught me a lot about my friends' and people all around the world's differences and likenesses.
One thing I would change about this project is what traits were researched. Many of them were hard to spot of only showed up in certain people. For example, it was often hard to tell if a person had straight or bent pinkies, which means that soem of the imformation may be incorrect. Also, not only was mid-digit hair hard to see, but I'm sure that many students, especially girls, lied about whether they had hair on their fingers or not! The other trait that I wouldn't usee is the white forelock trait. Obviously, it's very easy to see, but it usually only appears in adults. This isn't very fair, because many students only surveyed their friends who are their own age.
One interesting thing about this project is the survey results. Of the six different trats, four of them had results with the dominant trait showing more than the recessive. The white forelock trait had much more recessive than dominant, which is probably because more adults have it. For themid-digit hair trait, recessive was also more common than the dominant trait, though not by as big a difference as with the white forelock trait.
The colorblindness trait was the most predictable of all the traits. Most people do not have it, but the people who do, have interesting histories. Some males have no parents or grandparents with colorblindness! This is because their mothers and grandmothers must have the color blindness trait, but only on one X chromosome. Males are more likely to get it because they only need one chromosome with the trait to get it, while females need two.
Is there a dominant trait for everything? I don't think so. I think that everyone is different and it depends on the person whether a trait is dominant or recessive.

Hola, Amigos! Hello, Friends! What an exciting time this has been. We were happy to take part in such an educational endeavor, yet glad it's all over. It was a bigger undertaking than we thought. During post-survey discussions, we couldn't decide what it was we  were expecting from the project. We went in with a "let's just  do it and see what happens" attitude. The fifth graders were  in charge of the project including the surveying and tallying  of the entire school population. The traits were divided  amongst the four 5th grade classes. After taking the numbers  down, each shared the info with the other classes. They made a  huge poster to keep track of all the data. Afterwards, we found  that our numbers of people surveyed did not match class to  class. We never did figure out why this happened. The school as a whole was cooperative with the students, but we did have  a couple who did not believe that white forelock was a dominant trait. It was a great opportunity to re-teach the "dominant vs. recessive" concept, and for the students to take on the role  of educator. All in all, the students learned a lot about  genetics, data collecting, social manners and grace (under  fire in some cases), and teamwork. The best lesson of all was  that they learned to truly be a part of a worldwide mission, and not limit themselves to their little neighborhood school. On their behalf and mine, thanks for the opportunity to expand our horizons.

H. Johnston, E. Harpoon, N. Orozco, and G. Carrasco Mesa Vista School fifth grade teachers

Thank you for the opportunity to join the rest of the World in this exciting endevior. We have enjoyed completing the project and have learned many things.

The two main ideas we learned are the process of doing population sampling and how to analyze the results, using Microsoft EXCEL spreadsheet program. We found the information provided on the website to be helpful when determining each of the traits to be studied. We used a summation command to tally each column of numbers. We then divided each dominant and recessive allele of each trait by the total number of individuals participating. This resulted in the following results:

Trait # 1- Earlobes Trait #5-Pinky
Free- 64% (Dominant) Straight 42% (D)
Attached- 36% (Recessive) Curved 58% (R)

Trait # 2- White Forelock Trait #6- Mid-Digit Hair
With- 11% (D) With 42% (D)
Without- 89% (R) Without 58% (R)

Trait # 3- Dimples Trait # 7- Color Blindness
With- 44% (D) Yes 95% (D)
Without- 56% (R) No 4% (R)

Trait # 4- Thumb
Straight 50% (D)
Curved 50% (R)
 

Our results were very surprising. We studied in class that the terms "Dominant" and "Recessive" do not refer to the frequency of these alleles in a population; rather they refer to the fact that the dominant allele can "mask" the expresssion of the recessive allele in the population. But, as a consensus, we expected the dominant allele to have a higher prevalence in the population. We found just the reverse of our hypothesis. Only the Earlobe trait displayed a dominant/higher prevalence finding in the population sampled (64:36). The thumb trait appeared in the popualation with a ratio of 50:50. In all the other traits studied (White forelock, Dimples, Pinky and Mid-Digit hair) the recessive allele showed a higher prevalence in the population. Regarding color blindness, our class predicted correctly that the majority of the respondants to the survey would show normal color vision, based on class-wide sampling. The results bear out this result (95:4 normal color:color blindness).

In conclusion, next time we do the experiment, our goal is to increase our sampling procedures to canvass the entire school for the desired traits. We thank you again for allowing us to contribute to the Worldwide Search for a Dominant Trait. In response to the question "Do you have it?" we reply with a resounding NO!

Sincerely,

Mr Nugent's Biology class at Marist High School, Bayonne, New Jersey

Our eighth grade class was able to complete the project. We have been studying genetics and were very interested in this project.
Analyzing the data showed us a great majority of the people surveyed have free earlobes and a small majority have straight thumbs. The data also indicated that three fourths of the people surveyed have straight pinkys.
Surprisingly, the data showed that the recessive traits were more prevalent when we expected that the dominant traits would be more prevalent. We are not sure whey this is happening, but maybe it depends on the parents. What do you think?

Hello again from John F. Long school. We had a great time doing this project, our teacher enjoyed it the most though. We learned some neat stuff about genetics, mostly about dominant and recesive traits. We were surprised with our results because we had more resesive traits appear than dominant.

The only thing is we wish their was more places for us to respond to questions from other students in the discussion area. There should be something like that in the student area.

Thanks for letting us participate in your project.

Mr. Segersten's Fourth Grade Class

This is the final report from Auckland Normal Intermediate School in Auckland, New Zealand. The students working on this project are Grade 7 students (called Year 8 in New Zealand).

We did succeed in completing the report apart from some difficulties in downloading the colour blindness data.

The most important new learning for the students were the basic concepts about genetics and Mendel's Law of Dominance.

The outcome of the project raised many questions among our students which will lead to further study, but within the time frame for the project, we would have liked more time to explore and discuss the data before we prepared the final report.
Possibly the time frame was restricted by holiday/vacation times in different countries - perhaps that could be considered for the next project.

The results of the project did largely match our expectations. The real life nature of the project made it meaningful for the students and it was a good experience for them to have to deal with big quantities of data.
The students added the data totals using calculators and had to develop strategies to check for accuracy. They also were encouraged to look for instances within the data which didn't fit within the normal range e.g. the white forelock data from Oklahoma Road Middle School compared to data from other schools - and develop hypotheses for those disparities.

The frequency range for the dominant traits was 68% - 11 %.

The students noticed that there was not always a relationship between how often a trait occurred and dominance. The following recessive traits - no white forelock, no dimples, straight pinky and no mid-digit hair - all had higher frequencies than the corresponding dominant traits. they also noticed that Mendel's 3:1 ratio of Dominant:recessive often didn't apply.

We were wondering whether the traits selected were based on a representative sample of the world's population. Could the data be skewed because most of the sample comes from the United States?

Finally, we would like to say that this has been a challenging, but enjoyable experience for the students and the teachers, and we will look out for another project to get involved in in the future. Thank you.

We are eighth grade students from Stockbridge Middle School in Stockbridge, Michigan. There are five sections of us in computer classes. Each section completed the work separately, but our school’s data was collected from all of us to analyze. Both the Letter of Introduction and this Final Report have been merged to be considered as a single entry.
We completed the project according to the directions. However, we didn’t use just the seven traits required from the project. We added eleven more traits to the survey that we did in our local school. We learned that gathering data is time consuming but when many people are involved in the collection process it doesn't take as long. However, the more people participating in the collection, the harder it is to be accurate because some collectors may not understand the issues in the same way that others do. Entering data into a database or spreadsheet demands accuracy if the results are going to be true and scientific. In the future, we'd be more careful about collecting the data and making sure that all participants understand what each trait meant. We'd have fewer people collecting the data to secure better accuracy.
There were some surprised in the results. We thought that dominant traits were always more "popular" - that more people had them than had the recessive traits. This is not always true. More depends on the nature of the trait, not on the number of people who show it. If we had a chance to participate in this project again, we'd spend more time looking at mathematical operations that were used in creating statistical information such as functions and formulas for a spreadsheet in general and RATIO, FREQUENCY results in particular. We’d be sure we knew which characteristic was classified as “dominant” and which as “recessive.” For example, the thumb really messed us up, not knowing whether crooked (hitchhiker) is dominant or straight is dominant.
If we had a chance to talk to the director of this project, we'd suggest that the indicators for "dominant" and "recessive" be more clearly spelled out and then used consistently in the collection forms and final data spreadsheet file. (Sometimes "yes/no" was used; sometimes more specific terminology was used, i.e. free/attached.) It was not always clear which was dominant and which was recessive. For participants who are not using the science curriculum (genetics) as their main focus, it was hard. (We participated to get experience in on-line projects, database and spreadsheet applications.) We apologize for any errors that we may have made in data collection that skewed the results.
To analyze the data we first divided the data across the five hours of eighth grade computer classes, each hour choosing one of the traits to analyze. That helped us get familiar with what the results looked like without being overwhelmed with having to scroll around the computer screen so much. Then we all got the downloaded file sent to our individual computers to look at, to calculate totals and percents, and to answer questions related to the six original traits. In the process we learned more about spreadsheet structure, as well as functions and formulas. The data results began to show us that our original expectations were off the mark. Then we created charts and graphs to view totals and percentages of dominant and recessive genes. This made it easier to see the comparisons. We each printed out the answers to the questions, the spreadsheet with out calculations and the graph constructed from the spreadsheet data because they were assignments.
We appreciate all the schools who persevered. It was fun checking for new letters on a regular basis and then to be able to work with such a large amount of data when it was all submitted.

Some of our results:
Trait Total Participants
Earlobes 18760
White Forelock 18620
Dimples 18714
Thumb 19120
Pinkie 18376
Mid-digit Hair 18496

Our Science I classes participated in the Genetics Survey Project after we studied DNA and Mendelian Genetics. An earlier survey of six human traits that we completd with our parents indicated that dominant traits occurred more often than recessive traits. However, we were only looking at a small group of people. The data on different traits that we got from the worldwide survey showed us that, for some traits, the recessive form is actually more common.

Time was the biggest problem for us. The survey ran during our state standardized testing period and close to our end-of-year exams. Our classes would like to have psent more time examining the data on specific traits. We also with we could have contacted more school through the web board. There were a lot of interesting letters, and we would have liked to ask them about their data. The seventh grade classes will do this next year.

We used a form designed by our teacher to analyze the spreadsheet data. We totaled the number surveyed, the number dominant, and the number of recessive. Then we calculated the percent dominant and recessive and figured the dominant to recessive ratios. Our teacher put the questions we asked before the survey on our data worksheet. We answered the questions using our data analysis and drew our conclusions about trait frequency from our answers.

One of the most helpful things about the project was the web page that describes the survey traits and gives photographs and drawings for examples. We divided into groups to do our surveys and had the traits displayed on computer stations so we could look at them during the survey.

We think this was a great project because we really got to answer some questions we couldn't answer without the survey results. We also learned a lot about human genetics, and we also found out about other school from all over the world.

This is a final report from Johnston Middle School, Johnston,  IA, USA. Our biggest surprise with this project was that most  of the traits studied did not follow Mendel's expected 3:1 ratio  for dominant to recessive traits. The earlobe data came the  closest with an almost 2:1 ratio. The forelock data was very  unexpected at about a 1:8 ratio. We think some dominant traits  are just rare in populations. We learned that studying family  trees and pedigrees is one way to make sure a trait is dominant.  Dominant traits don't skip generations like recessive traits  may. The dominant frequency range was high meaning the overall  percentages for dominant traits varied quite a bit. Dominance  was not predictable.  We are always taught the importance of having a large sample  size in science but never really experience that in school. We  couldn't have gotten data on 18,000 people if we surveyed every  single person in our community. This project was great for  giving us this large sample population with a varied geography.  For this project we learned about Punnett squares, dominant and  recessive traits, genetic pedigree charts, using spreadsheets,  conducting surveys and using the coordinate system. We also  practiced lots of math skills.  Next time this project is done, we would like to see  tongue-rolling added to the list because it's in all the  textbooks. We would also like to see more co

We were trying to find out if there is a relationship between frequency of a trait in a population and if it is dominant or recessive. Each of us surveyed our family and shared our results with two other people in the class. We then put our data on a class chart. The data from the four classes on our team were added together. The totals were submitted to the Human Genetics Project
After all the schools submitted their results, we took the totals for each trait and calculated the percent of the population of the people surveyed who had that trait. This allowed us to compare the results from each trait easier and to better analyze the data
We expected dominant traits to be more prevalent in a population because they would cover or mask recessive traits when you use Mendelian Genetics and Punnett Squares, dominant traits would have a higher probability of occurring in most test, crosses, than recessive traits. However, we found that this was not the case. Only 2 out of the seven surveys traits were the dominant traits more prevalent in the population. In four out of the seven cases, the recessive traits were more prevalent. When you look at the data for the straight and curved thumbs, 50% were dominant and 50% were prevalent. Therefore, these results were not what we expected and they do not seem to follow Mendel’s laws.
Throughout the world there are many differenced in traits of people. From the data that we, as well as other schools collected, you can see not all dominant traits show up more often than recessive traits. For example, the dominant trait of the white forelock is uncommon in the population. Also, in the elementary school, Mesa Vista, in El Paso, Texas, color blindness occurs in 18% of the population where as in the 85 schools’ population color blindness occurs 5% of the time. Color blindness is a sex-linked trait. The gene is on the X chromosome. It is seen in males more often than females because males only have one x chromosome In Conclusion, the traits that you see most frequently in a population are not always dominant

We enjoyed very much the opportunity to participate in this   project. Our class was able to complete the project as it   was designed. It took us longer than we expected because   we had to translate all the materials into Spanish. .  -We learnt more about: genetic traits, genes, Mendel´s   Laws, dominant and recessive traits.  -We liked the design of the project. We wouldn’t change it.  -The organization of the project was excellent.   Congratulations and thanks for your help Neil!  -No, the results did not match the students’ expectations.   They were expecting to observe mostly dominant traits.  -The students analyzed the data using the Excel program   with the help of the technology teacher who worked in   collaboration with the biology teacher.  - The highest range we got for dominant traits in the total   data was for free ear lobes (64%) and the lowest was for   white forelock (11 %) This was a frequency range of 53 %.   - We were able to determine that sometimes the most   common trait is not always dominant. For example from the   whole survey, five traits had more people with recessive   than dominant traits (no white forelock, wo/dimples, curved   thumbs, mid-digit hair, and straight pinky)  -We learnt that red-green color blindness is inherited and   more common in males.

We are the bell 5, 7th grade class from Finneytown Middle School. This project was fun and interesting for the entire class.

We were able to complete the project as designed. This was easier because we had done a science lab covering the same general topics.

This project did not teach us a new procedure as we did it. If we were to do it another way, we might have, but we didn’t.

The outcome of the project was somewhat unusual, as we had several results that showed that the majority of the class did not have the dominant trait. We also had an unusual occurrence; several students had one attached earlobe, and one unattached.

If we could do the project again, we would make sure that we had the necessary materials to test for color blindness.

A suggestion to offer to the project leader would be to try a shorter time span to do the project in, as we had many days where we forgot about the project.

The results do match expectations that we had, even though we had few because we have done this before on a classroom scale.

The procedure we used to do this lab was to get in pairs and examine each other’s traits.

The frequency range of the dominant trait was 71%.

The dominant trait occurred in five out of seven traits that were tested. Dimples and the White Forelock disagreed with the overall project.

Only one person had color blindness in our class, so we do not know how this specific trait is inherited.

Next year when we do this during our hereditary unit, we will pay more attention to the color blindness test and acquire the proper equipment to test for it.

Our class had a great time participating in this project. It added a real- life dimension to their work in genetics. It also added some practice in practical applications of their math skills. It gave them a chance to review percentages and ratios. They also learned how they can program cells in a spreadsheet to do the calculations for them. Among the things they discovered was that the recessive    trait was the most often seen for three of the characteristics  we surveyed for (white forelock, pinky, and dimples.) Our class results matched the general trend of the survey results. We look forward to participating in future pr

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