Introducing the Model Shop – Enabling Students to Learn Modeling

From the CCSS Standards of Mathematical Practice – Modeling with Mathematics practice:

“Mathematically proficient students can apply the mathematics they know to solve problems arising in everyday life, society, and the workplace. In early grades, this might be as simple as writing an addition equation to describe a situation. In middle grades, a student might apply proportional reasoning to plan a school event or analyze a problem in the community. By high school, a student might use geometry to solve a design problem or use a function to describe how one quantity of interest depends on another.” 

From the High School Common Core Standards on Modeling:

“Modeling links classroom mathematics and statistics to everyday life, work, and decision-making. Modeling is the process of choosing and using appropriate mathematics and statistics to analyze empirical situations, to understand them better, and to improve decisions.”

From Science and Engineering Practice in the NGSS – Developing and Using Models practice: 

“Models include diagrams, physical replicas, mathematical representations, analogies, and computer
simulations. Although models do not correspond exactly to the real world, they bring certain features into
focus while obscuring others. All models contain approximations and assumptions that limit the range of
validity and predictive power, so it is important for students to recognize their limitations.” 

Building on our Signs of Change content initiative that brings history and mathematics together for students, we are excited to announce the Model Shop, our next math and science content initiative dedicated to an incredibly important concept – Modeling.

The Model Shop contains Tuva datasets and activities that enable your students to build a strong foundation about Modeling. Students get an opportunity to use elementary, linear functions to make mathematical models of real data. 

Through our activities and lessons, students will get an opportunity to answer the following questions – What is a mathematical model? How is a mathematical model developed? How does the mathematical model represent our reality, and what is the meaning behind the curve and the parameters? 

We are starting the Model Shop initiative with linear models, giving students an opportunity to create a model for data related to a pencil sharpener, book pages and thickness, Chinese trains, Hooke’s law, and others. Over time, we will continue to add datasets and activities beyond just linear models, including logarithmic, quadratic, exponential, and others. 

All the Tuva Datasets and Activities in the Model Shop are fully accessible only to Tuva Premium customers. Learn more about Tuva Premium here or get in touch with us directly.  

Introducing Signs of Change – Discovering Events & Phenomenon in US History Through Census Data

Today, we are excited to launch a brand new content Initiative called Signs of Change on Tuva. The overarching goal of this initiative is simple, yet incredibly powerful. 

We want to empower learners to discover events and phenomenon in US History – events such as the Civil War, the Great Migration, the Rise of Women in the Workforce, the Baby Boom, and many others – by enabling them to explore, visualize, and analyze US Census Data from 1850 – 2000. 

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The US Census 

It’s worth to take a side journey and learn a little bit about the US Census. The US Census is a decennial census, and is mandated by Article 1, Section of our Constitution. 

The first Census after the American Revolution was conducted in 1790 (under then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson), but the 1850 Census was the landmark census in that it was the first time the Census Bureau attempted to record every member of every household, including women, children, and slaves. To note, the population of the US in the 1850 Census was 23.1 million. 

The last Census took place in 2010, and it was the first time the US population exceeded 300 million!  

A Dance Between History & Mathematics 

The Signs of Change Initiative is a unique opportunity to connect history and mathematics for learners, enabling them to use foundational mathematics and statistics concepts to topics they are learning in their history class.  

For this initiative, we plan to curate a variety of datasets from the US Census Microdata from 1850 – 2000 over the coming weeks. In addition, we will make available sample activities and lessons around these datasets that you can use immediately, or that you can modify to make them appropriate for the needs of your students.  

Extending this Approach Beyond US Census

We strongly believe that this approach can be adopted well beyond just the US Census. The Census is a powerful instrument that countries around the world use to acquire and record information about their own citizens.

For all our educators outside the US – if you are interested in bringing this kind of an initiative with the Census data from your country, please submit your thoughts in Discussions or write to us directly.  

Attribution 

The initiative has been adapted from an actual book called Signs of Change, originally compiled and edited by Dr.Tim Erickson. The book stems from a collection of statistics projects his students conducted at Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, CA in Fall 2011. 

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Dr.Tim Erickson and all the students who participated in the original project. 

Announcing Tuva Premium for Schools, Districts, and K-12 Organizations

Over the 2014-15 school year, teachers and students in thousands of classrooms across the country and around the world used Tuva to bring relevant topics, authentic datasets, and data-based, inquiry-driven activities, and lessons to their students. 

Since we released the “Upload Your Own Data” feature in January of this year, educators and students have uploaded thousands of datasets for their math and statistics classes; biology, chemistry, and physics labs; and for a variety of projects on Tuva. 

Checkout some of the testimonials to learn about the the kinds of powerful, memorable learning experiences educators are able to create for their students on Tuva. 

Today, we are excited to officially announce the launch of Tuva Premium to further empower educators to teach and students to learn critical data literacy skills.

The basic version of Tuva (Tuva Basic) will remain 100% free for all educators and learners. Tuva Premium will bring a number of additional, powerful components across content, graphing, insights, and support services for our school customers. 

What are the differences between Tuva Basic and Tuva Premium?

Tuva Basic will remain free for math, science, english, social studies, and other educators and learners around the world. As an educator, you will be able to create your own classes, enroll all your students, and assign and grade activities on Tuva. 

With Tuva Premium, you will get:

1. Access to our entire bank of curated datasets and inquiry-based activities and tasks.  

2. Comprehensive Student-level and Class-level insights into their growth and progress.

3. Unlimited Dataset Uploads for all teachers and students. 

4. Dataset Requests, and dedicated on-boarding and ongoing support. 

Checkout Tuva Basic and Tuva Premium for additional details. 

Public, private, charter, and parochial schools around the country have already purchased a yearly subscription to Tuva Premium for the 2015-16 Academic Year. 

If you have any additional questions or would like to purchase Tuva Premium for the 2015-16 School Year, please write to us or call us at +1.646.481.2150. 

Introducing Interactive Data Courses on Tuva

At Tuva, our mission is to make data and statistics accessible and usable for data novices and learners around the world. We believe that the best way to learn data and statistics skills and concepts is by actually getting your hands dirty with the data; exploring, analyzing, visualizing, and interpreting it in a variety of ways and across different contexts.

To realize this vision, we have built Tuva – a powerful learning platform that brings together:

1) Curated datasets from authentic data sources

2) Dynamic, easy-to-use, yet powerful data analysis and visualization tools, and

3) Inquiry-based, highly engaging lessons and tasks.

Educators and students in over thousands of schools and hundreds of higher-ed institutions in over 70 countries use Tuva in a variety of different ways in their classrooms.   

Today, we are announcing another significant addition to Tuva. We are excited to collaborate with some of the most reputable organizations, institutions, and instructors in the world to bring to you hands-on, interactive data literacy courses on Tuva.

These courses will empower people working across education, healthcare, international development, and other sectors to learn and master foundational data and statistics concepts and skills that will be relevant to their work.

We are actively working on the interactive course design, the content, and the appropriate credentials for the first set of courses on Tuva. Subscribe to receive updates as we launch courses on Tuva. 

New Feature: Plotting Multiple Numerical Attributes on the Same Axis

When it comes to exploring data, how one organizes the dataset is incredibly important. Typically, each column should represent an attribute and each row should represent one observation. There are certain best practices one should follow when organizing a dataset, but we will leave that for another post.

There are times when the data is organized a bit differently, one needs to be able to plot multiple attributes on the same axis in order to meaningfully explore and analyze the data. Today, we are launching this functionality on Tuva.

Once you drag and drop an attribute on the x- or y-axis, you will be able to drag another attribute and drop it on the small rectangular box that appears below the attribute on that same axis. Here is a brief video showcasing this new feature in an example:

What do you think about this feature? Take it for a spin on the Climate Change or World Populations dataset, and post your comments, ideas, or feedback in the discussion thread.