DataFerrett is a unique data analysis and extraction tool -- with recoding capabilities -- to customize federal, state, and local data to suit your requirements. Using DataFerrett, you can develop an unlimited array of customized spreadsheets that are as versatile and complex as your usage demands. The DataFerrett helps you locate and retrieve the data you need across the Internet to your desktop or system, regardless of where the data resides. You can then develop and customize tables. Selecting your results in your table you can create a chart or graph for a visual presentation into an html page. Save your data in the databasket and save your table for continued reuse. The DataFerrett is a Beta testing version that will incorporate the latest bug fixes, enhancements, and new functionality that will be rolled into the DataFerrett after testing has been completed.
March 24, 2009 Activity webinar presented by Nicholas Horton, Smith College, and hosted by Leigh Slauson, Otterbein College. Students have a hard time making the connection between variance and risk. To convey the connection, Foster and Stine (Being Warren Buffett: A Classroom Simulation of Risk and Wealth when Investing in the Stock Market; The American Statistician, 2006, 60:53-60) developed a classroom simulation. In the simulation, groups of students roll three colored dice that determine the success of three "investments". The simulated investments behave quite differently. The value of one remains almost constant, another drifts slowly upward, and the third climbs to extremes or plummets. As the simulation proceeds, some groups have great success with this last investment--they become the "Warren Buffetts" of the class. For most groups, however, this last investment leads to ruin because of variance in its returns. The marked difference in outcomes shows students how hard it is to separate luck from skill. The simulation also demonstrates how portfolios, weighted combinations of investments, reduce the variance. In the simulation, a mixture of two poor investments is surprisingly good. In this webinar, the activity is demonstrated along with a discussion of goals, context, background materials, class handouts, and references (extra materials available for download free of charge)
This activity uses student's own data to introduce bivariate relationship using hand size to predict height. Students enter their data through a real-time online database. Data from different classes are stored and accumulated in the database. This real-time database approach speeds up the data gathering process and shifts the data entry and cleansing from instructor to engaging students in the process of data production.