Categories: All - visualization - inquiry - guidance - technology

by Jami Riley 11 years ago

521

Gapminder and Tinkerplots

Tinkerplots is a versatile tool designed for data analysis, particularly beneficial for educational settings. It offers various statistical functions such as mean, median, and mode, and unique visual representations like hat plots to help students understand data concentration.

Gapminder and Tinkerplots

Technology used for Data Analysis

Gapminder

Some countries do not have data available for certain variables/topics
Cannnot input your own data - limited to what is available
Teaching Material Provided

Labs to guide students in their exploration of data

Videos explaining different global patterns and macro-trends -- could use as extra credit!

Questionnaires to assess student understanding

Handouts and Lesson Plans

Map View

Can visualize the relationship between the country and the corresponding variable represented by the size of the data point

Data points are plotted on a map of the world

Timeline View

Incorporates history - students can ask themselves what happened during a certain time period that would have affected the variable being analyzed?

Can highlight/follow a single country

Students can watch how values of different variables change for each country over time

Regular Scatter Plot View

Simply click on variables you want to analyze and the information is there

Analyze the relationship of up to 4 variables in a visually appealing manner

Size of data points represents the fourth variable

Color of data points represent continents/countries (third variable)

Accurate and fact based

From reputable organizations

Lancet

World Bank

International Labour Organization

World Health Organization (WHO)

Not from the news or media

Collected from countries around the world

Students could not easily collect this data themselves

Raise student awareness of global patterns and macro-trends

Economy

Gender

Energy

Health

Environment

FREE!! (does not cost money)

Tinkerplots

Disadvantages
Students may be unfamiliar with the program

Guidance needed

Must set aside time for exploration and explanation

Costs Money
Advantages
Inquiry based

Can explore relationships between variables without being told straight out - for example how are area and perimeter related?

Findings easily shared with classmates - inspires more questions from other students

Students can construct their own questions from the data

Statistical Functions

Click on a data point to see its data card, or the value of each variable for that particular point

Hat Plots - help show students where the data is concentrated

Mean, Median, Mode

Manipulation of Data

Easy to manipulate data, which makes it good for younger students who are just being introduced to data analysis.

Different visual representations of data available

Visually appealing

Can change shape of data points in scatter plot - for example, little cat faces can be your plotted points!

Colors represent different variables

Data can be stacked either vertically or horizontally, which is nice when you have one variable and you want a count of each value

Dividers help represent distribution of data for each type - both numerical and categorical

Graph up to three variables at a time

A certain representation may make more sense to a student with a particular learning style

Scatter Plot

Pie Chart

Histogram

Data Used

Numerical and Categorical

Can use your own data

Hands on experience with real, collectible data

Can copy data from excel or enter it in each data card individually

Relatable to students