Our Clients

Since its foundation in 2001, StatCom has helped over 40 government and nonprofit organizations, and the number continues to grow. Some of the projects we have worked on are summarized below.

Recent Clients:

• Certell: In Fall 2018, StatCom worked with the non-profit Certell, which provides 'full-semester curriculum for high-school social studies', to help them analyze and visualize the data they collected from their eReader and video platforms. StatCom created visualizations to show how the eReader platform was used and how it varied across the 2017-2018 school year and across US states. We also investigated the video viewing behavior of students and teachers, and found that the proportion of the video they watched was significantly different, but for each group the proportion of the video watched followed a bimodal distribution: this means they either watched a few seconds of the video, or the whole thing.

Public Schools and Libraries:

• West Lafayette Public Library: StatCom developed a statistical model predicting the number of checkouts of various resources in order to assess popularity and cost effectiveness.

• Lafayette School Corporation: A statistical analysis of state funding data for school corporations was performed to examine the issue of horizontal equity in Indiana and, in particular, the relationship between education, teachers' experience, and certain types of school corporation funding. The results of this analysis were presented to the Indiana State Legislature and used to create a better system of distributing state money to public schools.

 

Community Centers and Organizations:

• Tippecanoe Arts Federation (TAF): StatCom assisted TAF in assessing via surveys member organizations' satisfaction with available facilities and services. TAF used StatCom's results as they instituted new policies and developed a plan for the use of the Wells Community Cultural Center in Lafayette, IN.

• Child and Parent Services Elkhart (CAPS):  is an organization based in Elkhart, IN that provides several classes per year that teach good parenting habits to the community.  StatCom analyzes quarterly surveys administered to the class participants, providing the CAPS with reports of the results.

 

Government Projects:

• Sagamore Parkway Task Force: In July 2003, the city of West Lafayette wanted to conduct a survey to determine residents' opinions on how to make the Sagamore Parkway, a stretch of highway in the Greater Lafayette area, look more attractive and catch the attention of new businesses. StatCom assisted the city in the development of statistically sound surveys of the area's residents and businesses. This work has been influential in policies carried out by the city and was featured in the Lafayette Journal and Courier and the Purdue Exponent.

• Department of Redevelopment of the City of Lafayette: In August 2005, the city of Lafayette requested the help of StatCom in writing and analyzing a survey of the downtown property and business owners. The focus of this survey was to gain the property and business owners' opinions about the type of improvements that should be made to the downtown area. This work was important in determining the direction and method of improvements to downtown Lafayette and was featured on the local TV news and the Lafayette Journal and Courier.

 

P-12 Outreach:

In 2004, StatCom added a P-12 outreach component to our activities. Members develop age-appropriate, hands-on statistics activities to present at educational events, such as classroom visits and community festivals. Some examples of P-12 activities are listed below. To learn more about StatCom P-12 Outreach, please visit our P-12 Outreach webpage.

• Community Festivals:

• • Purdue University's Spring Fest: Since 2005, StatCom P-12 Outreach members have set up a booth at this annual event which features fun hands-on activities by departments all over campus. Some activities developed by StatCom members for this event include: M & M bar graphs, Deal or No Deal, and a lottery game.

  • Celebrate Science Indiana:  Purdue StatCom sends volunteers to staff the Central Indiana Chapter of the American Statistical Association's table at the annual Celebrate Science Indiana event. Held at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, volunteers assist interested kids and their parents in learning probability and statistics through hands-on experiments.