High School Students Use Tableau to Analyze MiO

The majority of our Tableau for Teaching instructors work with university students. However, on occasion, we see innovative examples of data analysis skills being introduced early on, to high school students. This summer, Professor William McHenry led an information technology career camp using Tableau, for 26 high school students.

The objective of the IT camp course was to help students “understand the various ways in which businesses are analyzing (large) amounts of data”. To engage his students, McHenry created a simulation and case study on a new product from Kraft Foods called MiO, a water enhancement flavoring product. As part of the exercise, students used Tableau to analyze 368 real tweets, facebook comments, and other blog comments on MiO. They also taste-tested the product themselves, and each recorded their own sentiments on MiO (on a scale of -10 to 10).

The students were given a brief introduction to Tableau before being turned loose to explore the visuals and tools for themselves. Each team gave a report at the end of the exercise, showcasing their visualizations that provided the best insight on public sentiment towards MiO.

Prof. McHenry also partnered with Steve Wexler of Data Revelations, who helped him prepare dashboards of the analyzed results, such as the MiO Sentiment Score Distribution viz below.

(Click here to see more dashboards and read about the exercise steps).

Students then learned how the same data could be used to construct a predictive analytics model using a combination of both IBM SPSS Modeler and Tableau. Prof. McHenry plans to use this lesson as a basis for a similar exercise in his upcoming undergraduate and graduate level courses.