Case Study: Science Buddies helps students find the right science projects with JMP

An online personalized learning tool, developed using JMP®, helps students find the perfect science fair project

Science Buddies, a nonprofit founded by Kenneth Hess, needed a better way to help K-12 students find science fair projects that matched their interests and actually taught useful science. The challenge was turning a large library of project ideas and student response data into a tool that could quickly guide users to the right project, and it turned to JMP to help with data visualization and analysis.

JMP helped Science Buddies build and refine its Topic Selection Wizard, using visualizations and techniques like Sammon mapping to explore complex, high-dimensional usage data. With JMP, the team could analyze nearly 1TB of data and improve project recommendations; as a result, students using the wizard are 95% more likely to find a satisfying project, helping more of them engage in meaningful science learning.

Science Buddies

Kenneth Hess

President & Founder