PhET Simulations to Promote Data Fluency: New In-Sim Uncertainty Features and CODAP Integration

Longing for "imperfect" data in PhET simulations? It's here! In 2023, PhET Interactive Simulations at University of Colorado Boulder launched a new Data Fluency initiative, aiming to support learning goals that span physics, statistics, and data science. To address these goals, the PhET team has engaged in a co-design process to innovate new designs and technical approaches for adding adjustable noise, measurement uncertainty, and systematic errors into PhET simulations. In addition, PhET has partnered with the Concord Consortium to integrate PhET simulations with CODAP, an open-source tool for graphing and statistical analysis. This powerful integrated environment allows students to collect, visualize, and analyze data directly from simulations, offering a rich context for exploring uncertainty and variability. In this talk, we will present several new and enhanced PhET simulations—including Circuit Constructions Kit, Gas Properties, and Projectile Data Lab—and their integration with CODAP, as well as modeling how these tools can be used to address experimental design and data analysis learning goals. Open access resources and freely available links will be shared, as well as the roadmap for future work. This talk will be of interest to physics educators looking to engage students with the concepts of uncertainty and variability in data and to build data fluency while maintaining subject-specific alignment.