A Fresh Shot at Statistics in the Classroom: Three Perspectives Using World Cup Soccer Player Data

Abstract

In this article, we outline several activities revolving around soccer players who participated in the 2018 FIFA World Cup and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Classroom activities are described from different perspectives, useful for a range of different statistics courses. In a first semester probability theory course, students investigate the counter-intuitive birthday paradox empirically and theoretically. For an introductory data science course, students practice their data wrangling skills using the statistical software R. Additional activities are shared for those instructors interested in emphasizing multivariable thinking in a second semester applied statistical modeling course. The activities shared will provide a range of opportunities for instructors to incorporate the FIFA World Cup data in their own courses. Supplementary files for this article are available online.

KEYWORDS:

• Birthday paradox
• Data science
• Data wrangling
• Intermediate statistics
• Introductory statistics
• Multivariable thinking
• Probability
• Real data application

Supplementary Materials

The supplemental materials include all datasets and R code discussed in the article along with the “Soccer Overview” document. The shared datasets, “playersF”, “playersM”, “soccer”, “teams$\_$men”, and “teams$\_$women”, are included as csv files along with their corresponding documentation (“Dataset Codebook”). The R code files, “Data$\_$Wrangling”, “DataScience$\_$Bday”, “Exploratory$\_$Analysis”, “Multivariable$\_$Activities”, “ProbCourse$\_$Bday”, are included with embedded comments to help guide instructors.