STEM
DataForge
A data workshop: build a pipeline block by block, tidy small datasets, chart them with honest axes, and test what a chart can and cannot show. No coding required.
▶ Play it nowBuilt for sittings of about 20 minutes on the screen. That is our design budget, not a measurement.
Meet your mentor
Every Spark & Anvil app has a friendly mentor character that demonstrates, asks, and patiently scaffolds learning. On-device AI personalizes the mentor's responses to your kid's progress — never connecting to a server, never collecting data.
#29B6F6 DataForge is a data science playground where you explore small datasets! Build data pipelines by connecting blocks, create colorful charts and graphs, and test your ideas about what the data means. Think of it as building with blocks, but instead of towers, you build discoveries.
Characters who teach
Meet the cast
Each character in DataForge is one step of working with data: collecting it, cleaning it honestly, choosing a graph that tells the truth, reading what it does and doesn't show, and treating people fairly, plus averages, fair samples, fair comparisons, outliers and margins of error. The first five are the keepers of the pipeline, and each one looks after a single step of it.
Catch
Data collection — who-what-why-when posture (every dataset has a collector + purpose + omissions)
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Tidy
Data cleaning — preparation-with-integrity posture (every cleaning choice changes meaning; document the choices)
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Graph
Data visualization — shape-of-the-story posture (which chart tells the truth, not the loudest one)
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Tell
Interpretation — correlation-not-causation posture (data shows patterns; humans interpret; confidence not certainty)
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Guard
Data ethics — bias-privacy-harm-consent posture (who benefits, who's harmed, who decided; structurally present in every kit from kit 6)
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Crux
Summary — honest-middle posture (which middle tells the truth: mean, median, or mode; one giant value drags the average away from where most of the crowd actually sits)
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Cull
Representative sampling — fair-sample posture (a sample must mirror the whole; who gets left out silently bends the story)
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Ladle
Rates & fair comparison — like-for-like posture (compare rates and fair portions, not raw totals; a bigger pot isn't a bigger share)
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Stray
Reading the outlier — the-one-that-doesn't-fit posture (an outlier is a question to ask, not noise to delete; find out why before you drop it)
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Waver
Uncertainty & margin — confidence-not-certainty posture (every estimate carries a margin of error; show the wobble honestly instead of hiding it)
Read chapter →
Browse all chapters → · What's distributed-narrative methodology? →
What's inside
Pipeline Builder
Drag data blocks onto the canvas and connect them. Start with a dataset block (your information), add filter blocks (to focus on what matters), and finish with
Datasets
Explore real-world datasets about topics like weather, animals, sports, and more. Each dataset is a collection of facts waiting for you to discover patterns.
Charts and Graphs
Turn numbers into pictures! Create bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, and scatter plots. The right chart can reveal patterns that are hidden in raw numbers.
Hypothesis Testing
Make a guess about what the data will show, then build a pipeline to test it. Were you right? Either way, you learn something new!
How DataForge handles your kid's data
- ✅ All progress, settings, and AI-generated content stays on the device
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ Free — no ads, no in-app purchases
- ✅ No personal information collected from children — in line with COPPA (updated by the 2026 FTC amendments)
- ✅ No chat with strangers — play-together rooms use a short code and preset emotes, never typed messages
DataForge runs on ForgeKit — the open-source Swift Package Manager framework that powers every Spark & Anvil app. ForgeKit ensures consistent accessibility, COPPA compliance, and design language across the portfolio, so your kid's progress and preferences feel coherent across every app they touch.
Coming to the App Store
DataForge is in active development. Email us to hear when it ships — no marketing, no spam, just a one-shot launch announcement.
Email me at launch
