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

Anscombe's Quartet

Anscombe's Quartet is four two variable sets of data that have a particularly interesting property.

Upon examination the first three sets have the same x values but other than that the y values all seem random. But the interesting thing starts when you start to do some numerical analysis on them. Just start with some simple single variable calculations.

• Mean of each x set = 9
• Mean of each y set = 7.50
• Variance of each x set = 11
• Variance of each y set = 4.122-4.128

So, almost identical. And then if you take that a step further you can do the two variable analysis on each set and get the following:

• Correlation of each set = 0.816
• Line of best fit for each set y = 3 + 0.5x

So with all that analysis done, you might get the impression that these are pretty much just different aspects of the same sets of data. But then when you graph them you get something entirely different:

So you really see that they are very different sets of data. The lesson here is that your data cannot be fully described with either numerical or graphical analysis but really both are necessary.

Classroom Connections

So how do you use this in class? This set is really best used for students who have had both single variable and two variable analysis. It really is a great set for tying together many of the concepts of data analysis.

One thing that you can do is use this Desmos Activity Builder that walks students through the analysis. Keep in mind that students should be familiar with calculating mean and variance via a spreadsheet. They should also be familiar with using Desmos in terms of graphing functions and doing linear regression.

To analyze the data you (or your students) can use this Google Spreadsheet or CODAP file

Do you have ideas of any leading questions you would ask students? Do you have ways that you could use this dataset with students? Leave your ideas in the comment section.

Resources

Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet
The Data: Google Sheet CODAP
The Activity: https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/56364b6f58d09115172b6a3c