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citing statistics in essay

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by brightwinds » Sat Sep 01, 2012 5:55 am
Hello,

I need to use a statistic in my essay, and was wondering what the policy would be on citing it, or if that's unnecessary in this case. Here's the sentence:
It was just a statistic to me-"70% of 8th graders can't read proficiently, and most will never catch up"-an intellectual, not an emotional, issue.
And the statistic is taken from a website I trust and use at work. As far as I can tell, I have a few options:

1. Leave it as is
2. Add a citation (Source) at the end of the sentence
3. Add a citation *source at the end of the essay
3. Rephrase the statistic (remove quote marks) and don't cite
4. Rephrase the statistic and cite
5. Take out the statistic altogether

Obviously I don't want to do anything even vaguely hinting of plagiarism. At the same time, I think that including a citation might be distracting and a problem. However using this statistic to tell the story (I gain first-hand experience of the problem and it becomes emotional) I think strengthens my narrative.

Thanks in advance!
Brightwinds
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by machichi » Sat Sep 01, 2012 9:16 am
It sounds like the point is the emotional impact not the veracity of your statistic. I would say drop the quotes, but maybe make it more specific. Like 70% of US 8th graders.

I say that only 1/3 of students in X school district graduate from high school. I think the specificity is enough, especially since this is not an academic paper. We're just trying to illustrate the heaviness of the situation and the numbers are props not the crux of the message.
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by Marc@AcceptU » Sun Sep 02, 2012 1:14 pm
It depends on the larger context, but I'd suggest rephrasing and citing in the sentence itself. Something along the lines of, "70% of 8th grades ..., according to X" or "I'd read in X that 70% of 8th graders ..." - you get the idea. You don't want the citation to break up the flow of your essay, but you also want to properly attribute facts.
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by wayofjungle » Tue Sep 04, 2012 9:54 pm
I have little experience in your issue, but I think you are doing the right thing in including a citation for your data. Because of word limitations, maybe it would be okay to just use parentheses for the source. I don't think the ad com will penalize technicalities, but I don't know.

70% of 8th graders can't read (NYTimes).

Or maybe you can include a footnote since it seems the essays are submitted as documents rather than inserted into web text fields.
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