Using Classroom Data to Teach Students about Data Cleaning and Testing Assumptions

This paper discusses the influence that decisions about data cleaning and violations of statistical assumptions can have on drawing valid conclusions to research studies. The datasets provided in this paper were collected as part of a National Science Foundation grant to design online games and associated labs for use in undergraduate and graduate statistics courses that can effectively illustrate issues not always addressed in traditional instruction. Students play the role of a researcher by selecting from a wide variety of independent variables to explain why some students complete games faster than others. Typical project data sets are “messy,” with many outliers (usually from some students taking much longer than others) and distributions that do not appear normal. Classroom testing of the games over several semesters has produced evidence of their efficacy in statistics education. The projects tend to be engaging for students and they make the impact of data cleaning and violations of model assumptions more relevant. We discuss the use of one of the games and associated guided lab in introducing students to issues prevalent in real data and the challenges involved in data cleaning and dangers when model assumptions are violated.