Tools for Teaching R and Statistics Using Games

• Activity Number: 342
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 5, 2014 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Brad Luen*+ and Michael Higgins
• Companies: Indiana University and
• Keywords: software ; R ; interactive ; education ; assessment ; exploratory data analysis

Abstract

We present a powerful, flexible new method for designing interactive modules in R. As an application, we present an interactive fiction game in R, designed for students comfortable with computers but new to statistical software. The player must do statistics to navigate through a series of rooms to the end of the game. The software allows the player to use R to perform calculations without disturbing the state of the game. It aims to provide an enjoyable introduction to using R, and could be used to develop more general tools for statistics education. It allows simple generation of problems for individual assessment. The methodology could also be used to guide students through real-data examples of inference and exploratory data analysis.