I think you should go for it, and offer to help the kid assure that the data is applied in a valid fashion. the kid appears to be a bit precocious, or supported by a wiser adult, to be able to use "correlation coefficient" in that manner.
I've had some very positive experiences with 6th - 8th graders (6 to 8th form, I believe they say in the UK. I don't know the term for Finland.) doing designed experiments on things from popping popcorn to heat treating steel. And yes, working from the application to the theory will attract more interest and understanding than the other way around. Every time. Cheers, Jay Juha Puranen wrote: > Dear All > > On my www-page I have a Flash applet where you can make your own > scatterplot > and you get the regression model and the correlation coefficient > > http://noppa5.pc.helsinki.fi/koe/flash/corr/cp18.html > > One day I got some positive feedback: > > >Hello, > >My name is ------ and I am 10 years old. I was visiting your statistics > >website and found the section that allows you to create a scatter plot > >and calculate a correlation coefficient. It was a lot of fun, and I wanted > >to try to use it for my science project this year. > > > ..... > > > > Do I understand the message correctly, if I say > > " It is difficult to calculate the correlation coefficient, > but easy to make a scatterplot. If I can get the correlation > coefficient just by clicking the data into the scatterplot, > I am happy." > > Do you think, that this is a better way to teach correlation than > give them the data, formula and some statistical package. > > Juha > > -- > Juha Puranen > Department of Statistics > P.O.Box 54 (Unioninkatu 37), 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland > http://noppa5.pc.helsinki.fi > .. > .. > ================================================================= > Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the > problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: > .. http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . > ================================================================= -- Jay Warner Principal Scientist Warner Consulting, Inc. 4444 North Green Bay Road Racine, WI 53404-1216 USA Ph: (262) 634-9100 FAX: (262) 681-1133 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.a2q.com The A2Q Method (tm) -- What do you want to improve today? . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
