Blog #11

Incorporate real-world data and statistics to help students develop skills in data analysis and interpretation.  Probability and statistics is part of the curriculum in most schools and most states.  Whether you are following Common Core Math Standards or your own state’s math standards, somewhere in the sequence of math courses at your school, students should be getting experience with probability and statistics, and how to use them to analyze and interpret data.  Textbooks usually provide exercise problems correlated to the topic of the lesson, but depending on the age of your textbooks, these data sets can get outdated and students can lose interest in data that is not relevant to them (today’s students do not care about CD sales 🤪).  Finding fresh, current, interesting data sets, however, can be challenging.  There are many online resources, but some are confusing, some require an account, some are college level and well above the learning targets for your students.  Today’s blog is here to offer some help.  If you are looking for data to use in a statistics course or a statistics unit, here are a few resources that may be helpful.  I think each is accessible to high school students.  All are free and do not require making an account.

CDC – Center for Disease Control:  National Center for Health Statistics (link)

On this page from the CDC, scroll down to the Interactive resources.  There are several links in this section, but I think the ones below are the most helpful and user friendly.  All of these are interactive and are presented with interesting graphics that can get students interested in the topic.

• CDC Wonder takes you to a page where you can choose from a list of topics like Births or Heat Waves.  Clicking on a topic takes you to a page where you can request the kind of information you want.  (Sometimes you have to agree to confidentiality of the data before you can make the request.)  In the Request Form tab, you set the parameters that you want to include.  Then click Send at the bottom of the form.  When you get the results, you can click on the Map tab or the Chart tab to get visual representations of the data.  The results page will also provide suggested notation if the student needs to cite where they obtained their data. 

• National Center for Health Statistics Data Query System takes you to a page where you can click on an “Enter DQS application” button.  This application provides a drop down menu where you can choose from several topics.  Then set the group and sub group parameters and you will see a chart (graph).  You can click on the Table tab and see the table of data.  The data is mostly combined or averaged, not individual data points.  There is a switch on the chart and the table tabs for showing confidence intervals.  There is a bit of information about how the data was collected in the Footnotes and Methodology under the applet, and a suggested citation for citing the source. 

• National Vital Statistics System Data Visualization Gallery contains a few topics which are represented on a map of the US.  Many of the maps also include a table of the data values that correspond to the visualization.  Suggested citation is provided.  Although there are only a few topics, it is quite interactive.

• Stats of States is similar to the National Vital Statistics System Data Visualization Gallery.  Data is presented in maps of states with many also including data tables.  A few more topics here than in the previous link, but still a bit limited.  Does not give suggested citations.

Doug’s NBA & MLB Statistics Home Page (link)

For students who are interested in basketball or baseball, this page has statistics from both sports.  For each, there are stats from the current/most recent season, as well as only the second half of that season.  You can also access previous season statistics that date back to 1988-89 for the NBA and 1994 for MLB.  This is just one example of a sports page for statistics.  You can find stats for any professional sport in a search engine.  These are great sources for the athletes in your classes or those who are fans of a particular pro athlete.  

Gapminder (link)

“Gapminder is an independent educational non-profit fighting global misconceptions.” (gapminder.org)  They have international data sets that go beyond the US data of a website like the CDC.  They also provide interesting “bubble” animations of the data to show perspective of how the data compares.   On the Download the data page, you can use the search box to choose a topic or search for a keyword.  For the chosen topic, you will get data for all countries over many years.  You will likely need to narrow down what you want to analyze.  You have the option to download the data in .csv or .xlsx using links just above the table.  Under the table you have information about attributing the data to the proper source.  Once you have downloaded the data you want, return to the main page (gapminder.org).  Scroll down to Animating Data and click on the Understand a Changing World button.  On the y-axis, click on the title and pick the same topoic you just downloaded.  Then, on the x-axis, choose another variable to see how the variables are related.  You can mouse-over any particular bubble on the graph to see which country it represents, or you can choose to narrow down the results to world regions or individual countries on the right side of the graph.  Underneath you can change the type of graph to a map, ranking bar graph, or trend lines.  It is a great website that goes beyond just the data set and presents the information in some interesting ways that can spark conversations with students.

University of Florida (link)

Probably not the only university that has a repository of data sets to use, but this is the one that my Applied Statistics professor recommended for our final projects when I was working on my master’s degree.  This site is bare-bones data with a brief description of what the data means.  The data in these sets is well suited if you are using statistical software.  It takes a little practice to read the data, but what I like about this page is that there are HUNDREDS of data sets from a WIDE VARIETY of topics.  This can be a bit overwhelming, but it can also be kind of fun.  I mean, who knew there was a data set on Friday the 13th and Traffic Accidents??  I used the data on caffeine content in Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi and Diet Pepsi for my final project because I am a HUGE Diet Coke fan and wanted to know if there was any statistical difference.  If you scroll down, there is some organization into categories like Linear Regression/Correlation, 1-Way ANOVA/Independent Samples t-test, Randomized Block Design, etc.  It is not fancy, but students should be able to find something that grabs their interest on this page. 

Statistics is such a rich opportunity to help students make connections between math and the real-world.  Using data sets that are current, meaningful, or even just unusual hooks students to want to know more.  They can analyze the data, represent the data, and discuss the meaning and implications of the data in ways that may surprise you.  I hope these resources will help you and your students find something interesting to investigate.  Have a great week!