Computational Math Camp: Day 1

SURVEY

For the first day, I sent out a survey with the following questions. The items in (parentheses) refer to the type of variable produced by students’ responses.

  1. Name (character)

  2. Email Address (unique character)

  3. Undergraduate Major (factor)

  4. College Graduate Year (factor)

  5. On what date did you arrive in Ithaca? (date)

  6. Did you attend prospective student weekend? (logical)

  7. How long does it take you to get to campus from your home (in minutes)? (numeric)

  8. How many languages do you speak? (integer)

  9. Rate your level of programming experience from 1 to 5. (factor)

Students completed the survey at least a day before class started and I compiled their responses into a CSV.

Discussion Questions

  1. What is a working directory? How does it benefit you and your coding projects?

  2. Why is the email address variable a better identifier than the name variable?

  3. What kind of information is contained within the date variable? How does that change if the date you arrived in Ithaca is saved as a character or factor variable?

  4. When do you have to manually enter data? When should this process be automated?


SAmple Files

You can access a sample CSV file here, a sample .R file without solutions here, and a sample .R file with solutions here (don’t forget to update the working directory for your machine!)

Designing the Survey for Day 2

At the end of Day 1, the class designed a survey for Day 2. Some important questions about survey design came up, including:

  1. We want to ask people where they have been in Ithaca. Do we leave this open ended or do we give them a list to check off? What are the advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches?

  2. We want to ask people how much sleep they get. How does framing play a role? How might the choice set affect the responses?