How Teachers Are Engaging Students With Data & Graphs

Dr. James Baglin is a lecturer of Statistisics in the School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He recently hosted a plot-off in his biostats course at RMIT University. With rough guidelines (find some interesting data on the web, summarise it using descriptive statistics and visualize it using Plotly) and the example plot on Victorian breastfeeding rates that you see below, James sent his students to work. We’re delighted to be an educational tool and liked the graphs that came from the challenge, so we wanted to fill you in on the results.

First Prize – Australia’s Gender Pay Gap

Robyn Harris’s winning graph focused on the gender pay gap in Australia. Robyn’s chart highlights four variables: age (x-axis), average weekly earnings (y-axis), gender (color), and workforce size (size). Robyn tells us

I’ve always liked (and tried to use) bubble charts but they’re almost impossible to do in Excel - so glad I found a way to do them easily.

We also love bubble charts–need some help? Check out our bubble chart tutorial. Congratulations, Robyn! Honorable mentions go to Anna Obvintseva, Kelly Bannister, Evangelos Matselis and Anand Hamid.

Honorable Mention – Melbourne’s Bike Paths

Anna Obvintseva’s box plots investigate bike traffic around Melbourne by year and time of day. Anna was impressed that she quickly became experienced with Plotly’s interface:

Plotly is simply fantastic. When I first loaded the data, I was worried that I might need a tutorial for creating my first plot, however, it was not necessary, as the outlay is as intuitive as it gets.

Honorable Mention – Suicides in Australia by Age Group

Evangelos Matselis’ line plot is about the number of Australian deaths by suicide between 2003 and 2012, grouped by age. Evangelos plans to use Plotly again for future work. He tells us that

Plotly was pretty easy to use. Data were imported rapidly and the making of the plot was a joy. Many choices to make the plot more interesting and easy to interpret. Good range of colours and shapes, all the expected plots and bars. I would love to use it again when possible.

Honorable Mention – Polio Immunization World-Wide

Kelly Bannister’s graph tracks polio immunization rates by continent since 1980. Kelly tells us that

Using Plotly for this competition was a fun and innovative way to bring the data set I chose to life!

Honorable Mention – H1N1 Detection in Australia

Anand Hamid’s chart notes the dramatic increase in flu virus dections in Australia during the colder months. Anand’s thoughts on Plotly:

Plotly is cool because it can be used seamlessly across mobile devices to work on the go. The best feature to me is the easy customisation on the graph with no cluttered drop down menus and easily accessible tools.

How The Competition Worked

Robert Gould’s DataFest challenge inspired James to organize the competition. A vote by the class decided the winner.


James reports that

The plotting competition was a large success. The student learning outcomes were clearly demonstrated in their ability to locate data using the Internet, use statistical summaries and produce a statistical plot to tell a compelling story. Using Plotly allowed students to breath extra life into their plots with beautiful formatting, interactive features and online sharing. I hope the students will continue to use Plotly beyond my course to share similar data-rich stories in other courses and their professional careers.

We will be sharing James’ strategy for a successful classroom competition via our teacher email list. Sign-up here.