The following links are downloads to an activity that leverages CODAP to carry out a simulation. This activity assumes that students have played with and built simulations and probability models before. You may want to instruct your students to use the CSV Import Tool to put the memorization data into a CODAP sampler, especially if your class is large.
If your classroom does not have access to technology to run CODAP and leverages TI calculators, the data tool linked in the top navigation bar has data visualization options with summary statistics which can allow students to analyze the data without access to a computer. A similar set of files for an activity is given below. You can also adapt this activity to work with a variety of other statistical analysis programs like R, Excel, Python, Minitab, etc.
In this activity, your students will be randomly assigned to one of two conditions. One condition will be asked to memorize a sequence of 30 letters, where all 30 letters are chunked by hyphens into groups of 3 letters, where all letters are familiar acronyms or initialisms:
In the other group, they will receive the same string of 30 letters, but with the hyphens in different locations to obscure these familiar chunks:
We can then test the effect of familiar chunking by analyzing the data we receive from this experiment. To administer this memory experiment with your students, you can use one of the two Qualtrics templates below. If you have an institutional license or a paid Qualtrics account, I suggest using the template that has timers built-in to ensure students all have the same amount of memorization time and waiting time. If you do not have access to Qualtrics through your institution and are using a free account, then use the template with no timers.
For more information about importing templates into Qualtrics, see this help file on the Qualtrics website.
Once you have the survey imported, you just need to click the "Publish" button, which will generate a survey link that you can share with your students. The survey is already set up to randomly assign students to either the "good chunking"/"JFK" condition, or the "bad chunking"/"JFKC" condition. If you are using the survey version that does not have timers, be sure to have your students all go through the survey together, and use a 20 second timer for the memorization page, and a 2-minute timer for the waiting page. When you have had all your students complete the survey, go to the "Data and Analysis" tab, then click "Export & Import", "Export Data...", and then "Download." You can then directly upload this CSV file to the data tool linked at the top navigation bar to score all your students' results. You can then distribute the exported data to them, or project the data visualization and summary statistics options within this tool to have them analyze the data.Much of the code for this tool was created with assistance from AI. Several test cases were run to ensure accuracy of results generated by this tool, but please reach out if you find any errors or bugs. Data files remain local on your machine as this tool runs, so using this tool should not incur additional risk of a data breach.
Thanks to Allan Rossman and Beth Chance for the initial creation of this activity as part of their NSF Grant: Concepts of Statistical Inference: A Randomization-Based Curriculum (#0633349). This website aims to be an alternative to their tool that avoids storing student data online publicly, provides data visualization options, and allows for a waiting period to exacerbate the effect of the chunking.