The words Tuva’s screens and these articles use, in the order you meet them. Each entry says what the thing is and where you see it.

Your data

Dataset

One table of data in Tuva — its rows, its columns, and the name and privacy setting attached to it. Everything you graph starts as a dataset, whether you imported it or opened one from the Content Library.

Case

One row of a dataset — one dog, one state, one roller coaster. On a dot plot or a scatter plot each dot is one case; on a bar chart or pie graph each bar or slice stands for a whole group of them.

Attribute

One column of a dataset — one thing recorded about every case, such as a dog’s height or a state’s population. Attributes are listed down the left of the screen in the case card.

Categorical attribute

An attribute whose values are words: Species, State, Yes/No. Tuva treats each distinct word as a group, and can colour or split your graph by it. Editing one

Numerical attribute

An attribute whose values are numbers: height, year, count. Tuva can measure, average and bin these. Editing one

Tuva decides which kind each column is when you import, and the choice matters: it determines which graphs you are offered. You can change it on the review screen or afterwards.

My Datasets

The page listing every dataset you have uploaded, typed in, forked, or had shared with you.

Fork

To make your own editable copy of someone else’s dataset. You need a copy because you cannot save changes to a dataset that is not yours. How to fork

Tuva Collection

A themed set of datasets and activities grouped together by Tuva. Finding them

What you assign

Activity

A ready-made lesson built on a dataset: a sequence of questions students work through inside Tuva. Activities live in the Content Library.

Data story

A short sense-making routine built around a single visualization. What data stories are

Assignment

An activity you have given to a class. The activity is the content; the assignment is that content handed to particular students, with a schedule date, points and instructions of your choosing. Preview and assign

Class

The container for your students and their work. You assign to a class and grade what the class hands back. Create one

Class code

The short code students type to join your class themselves, instead of you creating their accounts by hand. Using it

The graphing screen

Tuva Tools

The data, graphing and statistics tools — the screen you land on when you open a dataset.

Case card

The panel down the left listing every attribute, and the values of whichever case you have selected.

Plotting area

The middle of the screen, where the graph is drawn.

Toolbar

The row across the top holding the graph types, the statistics menu and the modelling tools.

Legend

Where a categorical attribute goes when you want the graph coloured or grouped by it.

Table and Summary

The two tabs below the plot. Table is your data as rows and columns; Summary is the statistics you have switched on, as a table. Statistics and Summary View

Parameter

Any letter in a function you type other than x and y. Tuva gives each one a slider so you can adjust the curve and watch it move. Linear models

Statistics words

Quartiles — Q1, Q2, Q3

Sort your values smallest to largest and cut the list into four roughly equal parts. The three cut points are the quartiles; Q2 is the median. How Tuva computes them

Interquartile range (IQR)

Q3 minus Q1 — the spread of the middle half of your data.

Outlier

A case far enough from the middle that Tuva draws it as a separate point, beyond the whiskers of a box plot. The 1.5 × IQR rule

Least squares line

The line of best fit, computed for you: the single straight line that comes closest to all your points at once. Adding one

Movable line

A straight line you position by eye, by dragging. The counterpart to the least squares line. Using it

Population and sample

The population is the whole group you are studying — in Tuva, usually the whole dataset. A sample is a smaller group drawn from it at random. Sampling in Tuva