Sharleen Forbes & Emma Mawby
Statistics New Zealand
Teachers of statistics need unit-record datasets that are rich with relevant information. Official Statistics agencies have many such datasets, but need to keep them confidential. Our first SURF for schools aims to move towards meeting both these needs. It contains seven variables on 200 synthetic people. These people were designed to have very similar characteristics to 8,500 real people in the NZ Income Survey of June 2004. We will describe how we worked from the CURF (Confidentialised Unit Record File) for the Income Survey, to the SURF. The SURF is intended for learners, and the CURF is intended for researchers. We will do some school-friendly analysis on both, and assess the validity of results that learners would get from the SURF. The SURF comes with classroom-ready activities that we will outline. Copies of the SURF for Schools CD will be available.
Session 1d, Statistics Education Resources: 16:40 — 17:00, Room 446