Favorite data set?

[Callis, Laura]

Today is our first day of class and it got me thinking about what kind of data sets to use this semester. What are your favorite data sets to use with students in your statistics classes? 

I have two to share, one serious, one fun: 

• Fatal Encounters looks at deaths that occur in police presence. It has lots of variables, so I use it when I want students to develop their own research questions and think about how they could answer them and when I want to teach how to use Google Sheets. I use it for their midterm project. It has 30,000 cases.
• This small data set in CODAP is data my students and I and some fifth graders visiting campus collected in class about paper airplane models. We talked about study design, all of the different variables that could impact how far a paper airplane flies, and how we can control for them. I like this for box and whisker plots, because at first glance there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the different groups, but the box and whisker plots help us to compare a little better.
• (Where it says "YesLauncher" - those are the fifth graders. We gave them these launchers with clinometers (protractors) attached because we revised our study to try to keep the angle of the launch and the power behind the launch the same. The ones that did not have launchers were the pre-service teachers.) 
• Here's the airplane patterns that we used, with videos demonstrating how to fold them (but I would demonstrate in real time with the students) https://onelittleproject.com/paper-airplane-template/
• You could probably use this Rossman-Chance applet with the data to investigate statistical inference, too! 

Would love to hear about your favorite data sets! Please share!

Dr. Laura Callis

Associate Professor, Department of Science and Mathematics 

Curry College, Milton, MA

Learning Commons S-201

(617) 333-2130

www.inclusivestatistics.com 

[Sheri Johnson]

Favorite data set? This was a question posed at USCOTS Research Satellite, and throughout the conference, I thought of my favorite data set - any data collected from the students in the class. This was supported by Prince Afriyie's Keynote, in which he included the variable age in months. 

We started classes last week, and with 120 students in each class, I like to collect data up front, at the beginning of the semester. Here is a copyable Google Form I used this semester, including age in months as Prince suggested. Feel free to use or not use, copy, modify, share, etc. 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JPRasvJAkOOPr_UVUfPvDRWgAOnL65wcA_g8CLXZKhM/copy 

Looking forward to hearing about other favorite data sets!!!

Kindest regards,

Sheri

Sheri Johnson

Limited Term Assistant Professor

School of Data Science and Analytics
College of Computing and Software Engineering

Kennesaw State University