By Shonda Kuiper, James Msekela, Dev Nalwa, & Anaan Ramay (Grinnell College)
Abstract
The online racing game allows a player to race a variety of race cars on multiple tracks. Each possible combination of car bodies, engines and tires have different speeds and accelerations. Players can choose any options they like, but they will create faster cars if they thoroughly understand the data and techniques for analyzing it. Corresponding student lab handouts and interactive Shiny apps focus on bridging the gap from smaller, focused textbook problems to the full investigation process needed to conduct experiments. The result is that core statistical issues such as working with messy data, bias, data relevance and reliability are taught as concepts essential to every study involving data.