Statistics courses that focus on data analysis in isolation, discounting the scientific inquiry
process, may not motivate students to learn the subject. By involving students in other steps of
the inquiry process, such as generating hypotheses and data, students may become more
interested and vested in the analysis step. Additionally, such an approach might better prepare
students to tackle real research questions outside of the statistics classroom. Presented here is a
classroom activity utilizing the popular Hasbro board game Operation, which requires student
involvement in the entire research process. Highlighted are ways this activity uncovers a number
of research issues. A number of categorical and continuous variables are collected, making the
activity amenable to a variety of statistical investigations and thus easy to imbed into any
curriculum. Designed to mimic a real-world research scenario, this fun activity provides a guided
yet flexible research experience from start to finish.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education