Educational Tool and Active-Learning Class Activity for Teaching Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering. Issue 3 (1st September 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cai, Xizhen; Wang, Qing
• Is Part Of: Journal of statistics education. Volume 28:Issue 3(2020)
• Page Start: 280
• Page End: 288
• Publication Date: 2020-09-01
• Subjects: Hands-on learning -- Lesson plan -- Multivariate statistical analysis -- Teamwork; Statistics -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Statistics -- Study and teaching; Periodicals; 519.5071
• DOI: 10.1080/10691898.2020.1799727
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1069-1898

Abstract

ABSTRACT: To incorporate active learning and cooperative teamwork in statistics classroom, this article introduces a creative three-dimensional educational tool and an in-class activity designed for introducing the topic of agglomerative hierarchical clustering. The educational tool consists of a simple bulletin board and color pushpins (it can also be realized with a less expensive alternative) based on which students work collaboratively in small groups of 3–5 to complete the task of agglomerative hierarchical clustering: they start with n singleton clusters, each corresponding to a pushpin of a unique color on the board, and work step by step to merge all pushpins into one single cluster using the single linkage, complete linkage, or group average linkage criteria. We present a detailed lesson plan that accompanies the designed activity and also provide a real data example in the supplementary materials . Supplementary materials for this article are available online.