Using the CODAP Online Statistics Software for Simple Analysis

So for years I have been a user of Fathom. Fathom is a dynamic statistical software package that has been available for teachers and students, free, here in Ontario. However, the software itself has not been updated over time and currently won't even run on a relatively recently purchased Mac. Not to fear, some of the creators of Fathom have come together to create the Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP).

And because it was created by the people who gave us Fathom, it has a lot of similarities in style and function. It's not quite exactly the same but the biggest advantage is that it resides online so you can assign data for students to analyze and they can do so on any platform (probably not on a small screen phone very easily but still technically possible).
But for simple analysis, it does almost all the same things that Fathom did. Categorical and numerical analysis, mean & median, dot plots, scatter plots, linear regression, moveable lines, sum of squares, box plot, outliers and more. Some things it doesn't do (yet) are make bar graphs (though it makes the equivalent with dot plots) and histograms (though this may become an added feature). You can watch how easy it is to do some of those things dealing with simple analysis on the video seen below. If you want to play along with the video, here is the file that I used.

Once you know how to use the app, getting the data to your students is the next step. My preference is to have a pre-made CODAP file available for upload to CODAP. You can upload a file directly from any computer or conversely from a Google Drive. My preference is to do so from a Google drive. I have taken the liberty of converting many of the data sets on this blog to CODAP files. I have tagged all of them with the CODAP label here (also seen on the right side of the blog) or I have collected all the CODAP files in this folder. Conversely you can upload your own data in a .csv file. Though it does not seem like you can do this directly from a Google Drive. So I would stick to creating the CODAP files and sharing that with your students (either on Google drive or a local network drive). Either way, if you use any of these files, I would download them from this blog and then upload them to your preferred place.

And being redundant, here is a list of the past posts that I have done the conversion for and future posts will also have CODAP versions included.

Anscombe's Quartet
Smoking and Cancer
Movie Data
How Much Would you Pay for a $50 Gift Card?
Earthquake Data
Trending Data
Magazines
Speed Data
Electric Car Rebates
Is Levelling Up in Pokemon Go Exponential
Collecting Data from Pokemon Go

Don't forget to look at the CODAP site for lots of great resources. From more data sets, tutorials, FAQs and even though we haven't talked about them here, simulations. Or just look at the Educator Resources page.

Download the Data

All the Posts
Folder of CODAP files