By Andrei Perkhounkov (Kirkwood Community College)
Information
This activity uses a web-based simulation where students act as designers for an Algebra Homework Help website. Students drag and drop an 'Equation Solver' button to various locations and trigger a 'Pilot Run.' The applet simulates traffic, providing click counts and Click-Through Rates (CTR) to compare against previous designs. To evaluate these runs, students estimate the CTR using confidence intervals or perform significance tests comparing the pilot location to the original design, which was tested over 22,000 users (serving as population data). Because pilot results are displayed in an AI-friendly format, AI can easily read the summary stats, construct confidence intervals, or discuss the relevance of the computations with students in the context of the game. Once the best location is selected, the website is 'published' and data is collected over a simulated year of usage. Students then reflect on whether their design choice was statistically justified based on this long-term data. The activity is used for teaching inference for one or two sample proportions as an in-class activity or homework assignment. It can be used both as formative and summative assessment, such as for a take-home quiz. The activity is mean for undergraduate Introductory Statistics courses at community colleges or 4-year universities; adaptable for small classes, on-line classes or large lectures via student devices. Students like the activity and feel engaged. Unlike a word problem, the game demonstrates the real-world application of inferential statistics through an interactive environment.