Week 3 · Data Exploration and Preparation

This week has two hands-on activities, run back to back in the three-hour session. Together they are Stage 1 and Stage 2 of the habit you will repeat all trimester: inspect, direct an agent, verify by hand, decide.

1 · Structure and tidy thinking

Take a spreadsheet built for humans to read and turn it into data a machine can analyse — then prove the tidy version still matches the original. Deliverable: a tidied CSV + a 150–200 word verification note (Stage 1 Structure Audit).

2 · Clean and join with an agent

Clean two messy exports and join them on a shared key — then find out what the join quietly dropped, and whether the answer survives it. Deliverable: a cleaned, joined CSV + a one-page verification note (Stage 2).

Before you start

• Work in pairs (or your capstone team, where noted).
• You will use an agent — Claude or Manus — plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or Excel) for hand-checking. This site does not run anything; it gives you the flow, the files, and the prompts.
• Each activity ends with an individual portfolio entry and an xSiTe Stage checkpoint record. Submit your individual copy, not the living team files.

The one idea for the week

An agent will always give you a clean-looking answer. Your job is to find out what that answer is standing on — the row it dropped, the total it recomputed, the category it invented. You look, you check, you decide.

Companion links: Unit 03 app · Unit 04 app · Week 3 lesson plan