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arXiv · 2402.07029

Using Mathlink Cubes to Introduce Data Wrangling with Examples in R

Lucy D'Agostino McGowan
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Abstract

This paper explores an innovative approach to teaching data wrangling skills to students through hands-on activities before transitioning to coding. Data wrangling, a critical aspect of data analysis, involves cleaning, transforming, and restructuring data. We introduce the use of a physical tool, mathlink cubes, to facilitate a tangible understanding of data sets. This approach helps students grasp the concepts of data wrangling before implementing them in coding languages such as R. We detail a classroom activity that includes hands-on tasks paralleling common data wrangling processes such as filtering, selecting, and mutating, followed by their coding equivalents using R's `dplyr` package.

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Lucy D'Agostino McGowan. 2024-02-10. Using Mathlink Cubes to Introduce Data Wrangling with Examples in R. https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.07029

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