Teaching modern data analysis with the Royal Australian Chemical Institute's titration competition

Abstract

The Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI), the professional body for chemists in Australia, runs a yearly titration competition for high school students. In 1997, twenty five teams of three students competed in a heat at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. The results are an excellent set of data, showing random and gross errors, that can be used to illustrate many basic aspects of data analysis, including histograms, normal distribution of data, means and standard deviations, robust estimators, hypothesis tests and measurement uncertainty. They also support general observations that ¼ to ⅓ of analytical results might not be fit for purpose, and provide a platform for a discussion of quality in analytical chemistry.