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Showing posts with the label standard deviation

tracking investments as a stats assignment

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

variance and standard deviation - a video finally!

Sometimes it can be difficult for students to understand the relationship between average distance, variance, and standard deviation. I've struggled with how to make these concepts clear to students and I've finally found the best video ever for this! It comes from Professor Sauro's great site Usable Statistics . Please note that the video is in Flash so it may not work on some mobile platforms .