IPS - Day 58

Today was spent in the computer lab with students analyzing the hand-washing data they collected. It is still obvious that many students are not clear about how to approach their analysis. As students asked what graphs they should make, I would reply with my own question, "What is the question of interest that you are analyzing?" We then would discuss what makes the most sense to use to help answer their question of interest.

The other thing I noticed is that some students did not formulate a null and alternative hypothesis that related back to their question of interest. For example, a group's question of interest might be, "Do a majority of people wash their hands?" Their null hypothesis then might be, "Women wash their hands more frequently than men." While these both relate to hand-washing, the question of interest and the null hypothesis are focused on two very different aspects of the issue.

Other groups created histograms, box plots, and scatter plots. I would ask how these graphs help to understand what is happening with regard to their question of interest. Does the graph tell anything about how more or less likely hand-washing is to occur?

All was not bad as some groups clearly understood they wanted to understand what could occur randomly and what their actual results showed. I was able to work with groups on redistribution sampling and bootstrapping, based on whether they were interested in overall hand-washing rates or comparing two groups on their hand-washing rates.

Some groups still need to finish their analysis while others will start to write-up their results.

Visit the class summary for a student's perspective and to view the lesson slide.