The first aim of this project was improving the knowledge of the censuses and their function and importance for the Country. The second aim was disseminating numeracy among the students of primary and secondary schools. ISTAT organized a simulated census asking students to answer a questionnaire that contains special questions for children (how many times can you bound back a balloon in fifteen seconds?) and other real official statistics questions, easy enough for children (way of reaching school in the morning; what was eaten at breakfast, atcivities in the free time). The students followed every step of the collecting process, even making exsercises using their own figures, then they sent the figures to ISTAT using an electronic form filled in on- line by Internet. ISTAT is now collecting the figures to give back statistics to the schools who participated in the project.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education