February 24, 2011

In this session, we discussed challenges in teaching quantitative reasoning skills and ways of addressing them using visual representations of data.  Jason Young showed and discussed a video demonstrating the use of Gapminder, a tool that animates changes in data over time, to show how per capita income and life expectancy changed worldwide over 200 years.  Bill Williams demonstrated the use of ActivStats, a program that helps Stat 113 students explore data sets and learn statistical concepts.  Jim Lengel demonstrated the use of Gapminder desktop software and the Motion Chart gadget in Google docs, two tools that can be used to visualize local data sets.

Resources

• ActivStats
  A multimedia DVD-ROM for teaching introductory statistics
• Gapminder Desktop
  A free, downloadable tool for animating data
• Gapminder World
  Web-based tool for exploring global trends in life expectancy and per capita income.  The site includes a teacher's guide and ideas for labs.
• Motion Chart
  A tool for creating animated charts in Google spreadsheets.
• Instructions for using Gapminder and Motion Chart