Technology used for Data Analysis

Advantages

Data Used

Can use your own data

Relatable to students

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

Hands on experience with real, collectible data

Numerical and Categorical

Manipulation of Data

Different visual representations of data available

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

Histogram

Pie Chart

Scatter Plot

Graph up to three variables at a time

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

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

Visually appealing

Colors represent different variables

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

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

Statistical Functions

Mean, Median, Mode

Hat Plots - help show students where the data is concentrated

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

Inquiry based

Students can construct their own questions from the data

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

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

Disadvantages

Costs Money

Students may be unfamiliar with the program

Must set aside time for exploration and explanation

Guidance needed

Advantages

FREE!! (does not cost money)

Data Used

Collected from countries around the world

Raise student awareness of global patterns and macro-trends

Environment

Health

Energy

Gender

Economy

Students could not easily collect this data themselves

Accurate and fact based

Not from the news or media

From reputable organizations

World Health Organization (WHO)

International Labour Organization

World Bank

Lancet

Manipulation of Data

Regular Scatter Plot View

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

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

Size of data points represents the fourth variable

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

Timeline View

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

Can highlight/follow a single country

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

Map View

Data points are plotted on a map of the world

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

Teaching Material Provided

Handouts and Lesson Plans

Questionnaires to assess student understanding

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

Labs to guide students in their exploration of data

Disadvantages

Cannnot input your own data - limited to what is available

Some countries do not have data available for certain variables/topics