Last week my grade 12 students collected traffic flow data, analysed through Google Spreadsheet and finally used the regression tools of Plot.ly to confirm their hypothesis - all in the cloud and created across a range of devices and platforms.
In order for students to complete the goals of the assignment they were required to collect data collaboratively...
"Collaboration becomes necessary and technology allows such communications to occur. "
- SAMR Model, Dr. Ruben Puentedura
Back in the classroom students created frequency tables in their Google spreadsheets and used native chart functionality to plot a histogram. The Poisson function is one of the many functions available through Google Spreadsheet.
Visualizations in Google Spreadsheet are great, from area and column charts, to trends and maps (particularly cool)...for this students created a simple column chart comparing experimental probabilities with those of the calculated Poisson probabilities.
Students finally shared their data and combined it to create a histogram of overall data.
As a final stage to this exploration they were introduced to regression analysis through the tools in Plot.ly. An excellent, relatively new, Google connected app, Plot.ly allows the direct import of data from a user's Google Drive. This is truly an exceptional tool for data analysis and deserves it's own post (coming soon!). Creating best fit lines from scatter-plots is a breeze (see a tutorial here).
This was a collaborative and exploratory activity that was made easy through the use of Google Apps and Plot.ly. I'm looking forwards to further exploring Plot.ly and it's data analysis tools through the use of student generated data in Google Apps.
Highlights:
- data collection direct to Google spreadsheets works great
- collaborating on data within Google spreadsheets increased student interaction
- Plot.ly is a powerful, platform independent and Google connected data analysis app
