When exposed to principal components analysis for the first time, students can sometimes miss the primary purpose of the analysis. Often the focus is solely on data reduction and what to do after the dimensions of the data have been reduced is ignored. The datasets discussed here can be used as an in-class example, a homework assignment, or a…

In the early 1990s, the National Science Foundation funded many research projects for improving statistical education. Many of these stressed the need for classroom activities that illustrate important issues of designing experiments, generating quality data, fitting models, and performing statistical tests. Our paper describes such an activity on…