ECON 255: Introduction to Econometrics
Interactive Learning Games
These interactive simulations help you understand key econometric concepts through hands-on exploration.
1. 🩺 The Confounded Coefficient: Multiple Linear Regression Game
Discover why we need multiple regression by investigating a medical mystery: the data says exercise raises blood pressure! Work through the puzzle step by step and learn how:
- A simple regression of BP on exercise can deliver a confidently wrong answer
- The error term u absorbs omitted factors — and only correlated omissions cause bias
- A confounder (age) pointing at both the regressor and the outcome distorts the slope
- “Controlling for age” means comparing like with like: same age, different exercise
- Multiple regression (BP = β₀ + β₁·exercise + β₂·age + u) recovers the true coefficients
- The damage from omitting a variable grows with corr(exercise, age)
Key Features:
- Predict before you fit: Commit to your expectation for β₁, then watch OLS contradict it
- Causal diagram: Label the arrows of the age → {exercise, BP} confounding triangle
- Rotatable 3-D plot: See multiple regression fit a plane, and toggle to a within-age-band 2-D view
- Truth revealed: Compare your estimates to the true coefficients of the simulated world
How to use: Work through the six steps in order — each unlocks the next. Answer the multiple-choice checkpoints to progress. Works on laptop or phone.
STATA Lab Materials
📄 Download STATA Lab Manual
— This document contains the lab materials I developed to teach students how to use Stata for applied econometric analysis. The labs are designed to build practical skills alongside the course, using a combination of Wooldridge textbook datasets, custom simulated datasets, and open-source data from the World Bank API, where students directly construct and analyze country-year datasets. — ⬅️ Back to Teaching