1. Web Tools to Help Students Get Individualized Datasets on a Common Theme
Robin Lock, Ivan Ramler, Choong-Soo Lee
Department of Math, CS and Statistics
St. Lawrence University
Joint Mathematics Meetings, Atlanta, GA
January 2017
Dennis

2. Goal
Allow students (or groups of students) to easily create individual datasets with a similar structure on a common theme.
Criteria:
Easy, electronic access
Real data (and relatively interesting)
Let students personalize what they select
Let instructor anticipate what they get

3. Three Examples (Web Scraping)
IMDb Ratings of TV Series Episodes
Prices of Used Cars
Prices of Houses

4. IMDb TV Series Ratings Shiny app: shiny.stlawu.edu:3838/TVSeries
Ivan Ramler
Tenzin Choeyang
Shiny app: shiny.stlawu.edu:3838/TVSeries
User enters: the name of a TV series
(from a list of series with at least 10 rated episodes)
Output includes:
Episode Average User Rating
Season Number of Raters
Episode within Season
Episode name

5. Opens with a random choice

6. Autocomplete as you type

7. Preview of the data

9. What Can Students Do With IMDb TV Series Datasets?
Graphical (side-by-side plots) and numerical comparison of ratings by season
Graphical and numerical comparison of ratings within seasons
Time series plots of ratings
Scatterplot/correlation/regression to see any relationship between ratings and # of raters
Comparisons of ratings between two (or more) shows.

11. Used Car Prices from Cars.com
Choong-Soo Lee
myslu.stlawu.edu/~clee/dataset/cars
User enters:
Make/Model (from a list of 100+ popular models)
Zip Code (to search near)
Max sample size
File name to store data
Output includes:
Year
Price (in $1,000’s)
Mileage (in 1,000’s)

12. myslu.stlawu.edu/~clee/dataset/cars

14. What Can Students Do With a Cars.com Dataset?
Intro stat:
Predict price based on age (or mileage)
Is there an age where the predicted price is free?
Find a CI for mean price (or mileage) of a car model.
Test for a difference in mean price between two different car models (or two different zip codes)
Assess regression conditions

15. What Else Can Students Do With a Cars.com Dataset?
Stat2:
Try a quadratic model (for price) based on age.
Multiple regression using both age and mileage to predict price.
Find a prediction interval for the price for a particular age and/or mileage.
Compare the Price~Age regression lines for two different car models (or zip codes)
Compare mean price (ANOVA) for several different models

16. R2=84.5%
R2=89.0%

17. House Prices from Zillow.com
Choong-Soo Lee
myslu.stlawu.edu/~clee/dataset/zillow
User enters:
Zip Code, Max sample size, File name to store data
Default output includes:
Price (in $1,000’s)
Bedrooms
Bathrooms
Square footage
Lot size (acres)
URL to property
Optional (slower):
Address (street, city, state, zip)
Year built
Zestimate
Exact Price

18. myslu.stlawu.edu/~clee/dataset/zillow

19. Default Housing Data: Canton, NY

20. Full Housing Data: Canton, NY

21. What Can Students Do With a Zillow Houses Datasets?
Predict price based on beds, baths, sqfootage, and/or lot size as single predictors.
Use multiple regression to predict price
Compare mean house price between different zip codes
Detect outliers and influential points

22. What’s up with these houses?

23. Default Housing Data: Canton, NY

26. New Medical Building

27. Benefits of Individualized Datasets
Each student (group) has their own data
Students can personalize the data (picking a TV show, car model, or housing area of interest).
Data collection is relatively easy/convenient.
Instructor can anticipate the general features of the dataset (e.g. decreasing trend for price vs. age of car)
Drawbacks?
Challenging to grade when each student (group) has a different dataset

28. Grading Tip: RMarkdown
Students turn in a .csv file with their data
Prepare a generic R script that reads the data from a .csv file and does many of the relevant calculations, summary statistics, fitted models, and graphics
Note that variable names and format are standardized
Embed the R commands in a Markdown document that formats the results to make a student-specific key.

29. Link to All Three
myslu.stlawu.edu/~clee/dataset