Graphical Data Analysis

Advice

• Students have problems comparing two distributions.  Plan to spend longer on this topic than expected.
• I like to stress graphical analogs to inference. Students have an easier time retaining what the learn in a graphical context.
  
• I assign a data description writing project based on one of Robin Lock's projects.  It makes them pick a data set they like and describe it with very basic statistics and what is there visually. It gets them started on graphical thinking in stats.
• Also I like this comic when discussing outliers.  xkcd comic

Applets/ websites

• Data visualization: Much of what is on these websites is not a part of the standard introductory statistics course. They do however contain many creative ways to visualize data beyond the bar graph, histogram, or scatter plot. Students tend to get really interested in these "cool graphs."
  
• Gapminder "Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view." This site not only contains great animated graphs but also all of the data they use. This data can be a good source for projects.
  
• many eyes lets you explore data visualizations other people have created, comment on them, and even create your own. For example, you can make bubble charts, tree maps, and wordles.
  

Good problems and DataSets

• Look at the first problem on any of the AP Statistics exams.  Be sure to read the grading rubrics.