Component 2 is a look at the fascinating, ground breaking and thoroughly amazing world
of data and how it is used and presented in the world today. By treating it this way you
get to showcase a wonderful component that can really drive your learners' choices both
into something interesting but also a very solid and good potential career path in the
current climate.
Looking at learning aim A this can be seen as typical data analysis however if you get
learners to look at how they themselves deal with data and information, it can really be
beneficial. One example of this is gossip. You can show
them how this information can be represented as fact. There is a great example of fake
news stories represented as fact on the Information is beautiful website
This usually means either something UK-based and political for example figures quoted during
the Brexit debate, or something surrounding a celebrity from claims about why they decided
not to do a certain movie or TV show to such things as why they're dating a certain person.
You can then get them to say how they would evaluate this information for example in terms of trust,
do they trust one source over another, this could be something like an Instagram post
from the personal account of that celebrity being trusted over something that was reported in a newspaper.
By making them assess information and the characteristics in this way you can show them
how this is the same when applied to data sets. A great resource for how this is done
is the More or Less: Behind the Stats podcast on the BBC
Looking at Component 2 subject content for element A6 specifically and the different
types of sectors that use data modelling you can reference how this is visually displayed.
There are plenty of examples on the web of how different industries show data in different ways
and how they interpret this in what they do. This can link well with both elements of A2
representing information and element A4 Data collection. You can show them how some Industries
require a much larger sample, how some industries prefer secondary data over primary data and how some companies
such as ipsos Mori collect data on behalf of these sectors and companies
and also how the sector uses this data to respond to it.
There are examples such as Volkswagen and how they responded to the emissions scandal
, to the UK parliament and the issues around MP expenses. Another good example that the learners
will be aware of is Fortnite and how they responded to a large amount of feedback on loot
boxes.
Now looking at Learning Aim B, This concentrates on creating dashboards and manipulating data
to go on them. This is where using real datasets can be key because it gives learners a real
information point that gives them a tangible outcome. Something you can do here is use
a service such as kaggle.com this has lots of free data sets that show such things as
FIFA player rankings or Oscars given out and would allow learners to interrogate this
and display it very visually as well as allowing them to do data manipulation to better display it given.
A really good way is using something such as Microsoft PowerBi. This is a free tool
and really allows you to focus on elements of component 2, learning
aim B, B2 which show appropriate presentation features as you can switch between different
chart and style types at the click of a button. This is a long way away from having to do
multiple chart wizards if you were using something such as Excel, and allows the data display
and data visualisation to be much more interesting for your learners and less intensive in terms
of skill-set while still meeting the learning aim B assessment criteria, specifically B.1P4
and the level 2 criterion.
The nice thing about using a good visualisation tool is that it also makes Learning Aim C
a lot more accessible and rewarding. This is because where a learner has to draw conclusions
based on data showing trends, patterns, anomalies, and possible errors it does mean that if the
data is visualized well they can be much clearer about how these have come about and what they
mean. If they use a good visualisation tool, for example PowerBi, then it can also help
with Learning Aim C assessment criteria, where they have to draw conclusions based on the
presented data whereby they can show a different chart type and how this can be used to misrepresent data
or demonstrate bias by showing an inaccurate conclusion.