My students all completed the survey as a class assignment. I designed a survey sheet which allowed them to answer with one letter whether or not they had each of the inherited traits in your survey. The students worked in pairs to determine whether they had a trait or not. In some cases I had to be the final judge. Then, in Xcel I designed a spread sheet so the data could be entered easily. After printing it out I had students count the number of people.
We did have some questions. White forelocks confused us the most because no one had really "white" hairs, but many had very blond hair at their temples. I was looking for something like Mrs. Munster had in the old TV show! In that case no one of the 129 had it.
Two students were surprised to find they had one ear lobe attached and the other free! We had nowhere to enter that on the survey form. The same applied to thumbs and pinkies; 1 student had 2 different thumbs and 2 had different pinkies.
One student is red-green color blind. He knows that he inherited through his mother. Her father did not have it, but an uncle did and it came from his father (my student's great-grandfather)
Our biggest question is who said dimples are dominant? We have a few students who have them and none of their parents did.
We also decided we were too small a pool of people to get entirely accurate percentages.
The students really enjoyed this project and are looking forward to seeing the results of all the other schools.
The Genetics Project is maintained with WebBBS 2.14.