Project 1: Sibling Interviews · Dataset
The Sibling Interviews dataset
35 interviews, 11 questions each. This is the real dataset we build and analyze in Project 1: Sibling Interviews, collected the same way we ask students to collect their own.
How it was collected
Each row is one interview with one person, and every interview answers the same fixed list of questions. Lesson 1.0 is where we choose those questions and talk through their ambiguities (does “how many siblings” include the person answering?), and Lesson 1.1 is where a notebook of interviews becomes a spreadsheet like this one, with the questions across the first row.
The people we interviewed were born between 1966 and 2012, and their hometowns are in 8 countries. It is a sample of the people we could reach, not a random sample of any population, so it tells us about these 35 people and makes a good dataset to learn with. Why that matters is the first thing Project 1 teaches.
Snapshot of 2026-09-04. The dataset grows as more interviews come in; this page updates with it.
What we asked
- Nickname
- A nickname, never a real name. It keeps the dataset free of personal information.
- Birthyear
- The year the person was born.
- Number of Siblings
- How many brothers and sisters they have.
- Number of Cousins
- How many cousins they have.
- Hours of Sleep
- How many hours they sleep a night.
- Has a Pet
- Whether they have a pet.
- Pet Species
- What kind of pet, if any.
- Pet Name
- The pet’s name.
- Fav Color
- Their favorite color.
- Hometown
- The town they consider home.
- Home State, Country
- The state and country of that hometown.
Two first looks
Source: Learn With Numbers sibling interviews, n = 35, snapshot of 2026-09-04 · Lesson 1.3 builds this chart one dot at a time
Source: Learn With Numbers sibling interviews, n = 35, snapshot of 2026-09-04
Use it, or build your own
We publish a summary here rather than the rows. The lessons work best when you collect your own interviews, and your dataset will look different from ours, which is half the fun of comparing them. Start with Lesson 1.0, or see the whole Project 1: Sibling Interviews project.