03. Authentic Data Explorations: Engaging Students with Statistical Investigations in Meaningful Contexts

Inquiry-based activities allow students to explore questions they find interesting and applicable, motivating deeper engagement in a given task. Authentic data situates inquiry-based statistical explorations in meaningful contexts and advances the development of students' data acumen. We have designed two inquiry-based activities that offer students rich experiences exploring questions about authentic data through R Shiny applets. Each activity aims to strengthen students' data exploration skills while furthering their statistical content knowledge. The two lessons are centered on understanding concepts related to the normal distribution and confidence intervals for proportions. The contexts include distributions of rent across the US and access to the supplemental nutrition assistance program based off regional demographics. The two lessons meet introductory statistics learning objectives and foster statistical literacy as students become aware of social phenomena that are modeled by statistics and are situated in a context of societal and personal importance. Students will gain experience taking the lead in statistically investigating a question that interests them and will practice communicating their results to others. Creating and implementing this activity and the R Shiny Applet will be discussed as well as the importance of situating statistical tasks in real-world contexts with authentic data.

Beginner

Knowledge

Women in Statistics and Data Science 2024