Dog Ranking:

I took a few dog pictures yesterday.  They aren't anything special, just photos as I sat in the kennel and visited with the dogs before feeding, but it is hard for me to spend anytime out there without planning, strategizing  (Is that a real word?), or generally thinking about things to come- different trails will run, races we'll do together, etc...

Yesterday, what I was thinking about most was what traits make a good sled dog. And of course all my dogs are good dogs! 

I have a whole set of ideas on this but thought it might be a great exercise for students to think through this own their own.
It applies directly to understanding how we classify and rate many things in our lives, anything from sports teams to our favorite movies.

So here is a task:
Look at the photos tagged 'dogs' on my Flikr stream and decide which ones you would classify as “great,” “good,” or “okay.

Questions to consider:
What defines the quality of a sled dog?
What traits distinguish one sled dog from another? Are they visible in a photo?

 
Make a list of the dogs you looked at and sort them based on the 3 categories from above- Great, Good, Okay.

Now create a table to look at the relative 'quality' of each dog and
assign a numerical scale of 1-5 (1 is 'Okay” 5 is 'great') for each trait
 
 
    Trait #1    Trait #2    Trait #3       
Lost                   
Raj                   
Hero                

Add up the totals for each dog and sort them from highest to lowest.

Some questions to address:
Does your 'qualitative' list match the 'quantitative' results of your table?

Why? Why not?

What additional information about each individual dog would help to classify the dogs more accurately?

And finally, if you were putting together a dog team would you use this kind of analysis to help you? (Why? Why not?)

Okay, now I better get out there and go for a run...

Ohh and by the way, in my mind, all my dogs come out as GREAT!