Extend the Activity With Your Own Data

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You may paste your own data into the text area on the "Cut Data" page, as long as you prepare it according to these instructions. The JavaScript program will build a control panel using certain assumptions about format.

If you already have your data on a spreadsheet, then you will be able to copy it from the spreadsheet and paste it into the text area. Before you copy and paste, make sure your top row has the names of the variables whose values run down each column. For example, "mint," "year," and "mass" each designate the values that run down their respective columns.

Make sure that all of your rows are the same length, and that all of your columns are same length. In other words, your spreadsheet must be rectangular, with no missing cells in any row or column.

Next, make sure that the individual cells in the spreadsheet have no spaces in them. For example, some of the pennies in our older data sample, from the jar, were minted in San Francisco. We had to enter the name as "San_Francisco" to keep the program from mistaking the space between words as a separation of cells for two mints that did not exist: "San" and "Francisco."

Once you paste the spreadsheeted data into the text area, it might not look exactly aligned.

Don't try to fix the misalignment. If you have followed the previous instruction on format, the program should still build a control panel correctly.

You can also paste data from the text area back into a spreadsheet. Then you can add to an existing sample in the ease of your own spreadsheeting program.

You are not restricted to penny data, when it comes to making this page work. You can add any data to the text area in the correct format, and the JavaScript should make a customized control panel.

Here are some ideas for data to measure and analyze with these web pages:

1. Measure the widths of rubber bands, their thicknesses, their circumferences (twice their lengths when flattened), and the weights that cause rubber bands to break. If you gather this data over an extended part of the year, you might also measure the room temperature when they break, and the number of days since they were purchased.
2. Count the number of student absences each day. Note the day of the week, the number of school days since the beginning of the school year, and the number of school days until the next holiday or vacation.
3. Find the compass directions with respect to the sky and horizon. At your school, informally schedule two or three times for a few students to watch the sky on a relatively clear days. For every plane that they observe, have them note whether it is a jet or prop, its compass direction, and the time of day. They could also get indirect information on its speed and altitude if they time how long it takes the aircraft to cross an surveyor's transit (or two legs of three-legged music stand, using the third leg to plant your nose and shoot the angle). Analysis on this page, coupled with research into air travel, might give them rules of thumb as to where the planes are going according these characteristics of their flight.

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