The Great Escape: A Classroom Activity for Teaching OLS

James Horton ()

No 1, Reeves School of Business and Economics Working Papers from Methodist University, Charles M. Reeves School of Business and Economics

Abstract: This paper describes a kinesthetic learning activity for teaching ordinary least squares in an undergraduate econometrics course. In my experience, students often grasp what to do without really understanding why OLS works the way it does. In this activity, students choose an escape path across a prison courtyard, minimizing the sum of squared distances from "guard towers" in the room. This simple, fun activity gets students involved in a physical scenario with meaningful minimization consequences. I describe the activity design and what instructors need to conduct it, in the hope that others find it useful in their own classrooms.

Keywords: econometrics; ordinary least squares; active learning; kinesthetic learning; regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 A22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://professorjimothy.github.io/repec/wpaper/mtdwp001.pdf First version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mtd:wpaper:001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Reeves School of Business and Economics Working Papers from Methodist University, Charles M. Reeves School of Business and Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by James Horton ().