POK STATS BLOG

One semester, I tried tracking a classroom "investment portfolio" as a means of keeping students interested in statistics. relates to data visualizations ideas of risk using standard deviation compared their own portfolio's performance to benchmark indexes such as NASDAQ, SP500, and Dow Jones introduces students to investments  After looking around a bit, I decided to create an account in  SigFig  for each class. My Assessment of the Assignment: Overall, the assignment was interesting for most students. works best if we check in regularly to see how the class portfolio is performing compared to indices-- students got a kick out of seeing their portfolio out-perform the indices assign a reading of standard deviation as a measure of risk assign a reading about alpha and beta

This link is to Pew's interactive section which includes maps, quizzes, test, etc. It's always fun to do one as a class activity: http://pewresearch.org/interactive/

So I've been giving some thought to how to go about revamping this class. I think the first day, I would ask all students to fill out 5 surveys. Then they would enter all that raw data into SPSS to give them a good idea of data entry-- how SPSS records data in numerical form. Although students say they understand this when we work with existing data sets, I'm beginning, more and more, to see the value of this step.