Introduction

The "Datasets and Stories" department of the Journal of Statistics Education provides a forum for exchanging interesting datasets and discussing ways they can be used effectively in teaching statistics. This section of JSE is described fully in the article "Datasets and Stories: Introduction and Guidelines" by Robin H. Lock and Tim Arnold (1993). The Journal of Statistics Education maintains a Data Archive that contains the datasets described in "Datasets and Stories" articles, as well as additional datasets useful to statistics teachers. Lock and Arnold (1993) describe several criteria that will be considered before datasets are placed in the JSE Data Archive.

Guidelines for Submissions

At least two files are associated with each archived dataset. A "txt" file explains the structure of the data, gives the source, describes all variable codings, provides sufficient narrative to put the data in context, and suggests interesting questions to pursue. A second "dat" file contains the raw data as a flat ASCII text file. The "txt" file should contain any format information needed to process the raw data using standard computer packages. In some cases, a dataset might require more than one raw data file. Lock and Arnold (1993) give additional information about the txt and dat files. The appendix of the paper gives a template for the documentation (txt) file. (Note that "txt" files were previously referred to as "doc" files. The file extension was changed in November 1998 to avoid confusion with Microsoft Word® files.)

An article for the "Datasets and Stories" section of JSE should be an expansion of the narrative found in the txt file. It should follow the JSE Guidelines for Authors. Dataset articles are refereed by the "Datasets and Stories" Editors and by peer reviewers. Before submitting a dataset article, please consult dataset articles in recent issues of JSE for format.

Department Editor

Datasets for the JSE Data Archive, articles for the "Datasets and Stories" department, and questions or suggestions may be directed to the department editor:

Reference

Lock, R. H., and Arnold, T. (1993), "Datasets and Stories: Introduction and Guidelines," Journal of Statistics Education [Online], 1(1). (http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v1n1/datasets.html)