Activities Utilizing Student-Generated Data: Experimenting with Experiments

• Activity Number: 166
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 4, 2014 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Diane Evans*+
• Companies: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
• Keywords: Student generated data ; Practical activity ; Probability ; Statistics ; Teaching

Abstract

In my Engineering Statistics I course, students are excited to do in-class labs if they involve data that students generate themselves. Over the past ten years, I have been able to determine some of the activities that work the best for a 50-minute class period. The short amount of time that students spend obtaining their own data at the beginning of class period is well worth their increased energy and motivation in determining solutions based on this real data. In this article, I will discuss two activities that can be completed in one or two class periods and provide data for explaining and computing basic probability values and performing statistical inference with a paired data set. The time and money required to prepare for these activities is minimal, and I will provide a list of problems to accompany them. The first activity is based on the game "Pass the Pigs," and the other activity involves comparing water displacements of students' dominant and non-dominant hands.