The Iceland Correlation

One thing I love about teaching IR is that world events intervene in such a way as to provide perfect classroom material. One item in the news right now is about the first police shooting ever in Iceland.  This shooting happened to occur on the last day a friend of mine was in Reykjavik on vacation.  So I walked into my methods class and as a starting refresher exercise, asked them to tell me whether this was an example of correlation, causation, both or neither.  It took only five minutes of class but was an amusing way to start off the session (they wanted to know all kinds of details about my friend to make their determination) and served as an effective way of bringing in real world events to the study of methods.  The only downside in doing things like this is that its definitely a one-shot.  I won’t be able to write this one down and use it again in a future class, but will instead have to rely on something else in the news to provide an example.  I’m sure the media won’t disappoint!