Brown Dot Teaching Resources

A group of Brown Dots (1999-2000 Project NExT Fellows) are collecting web resources on various topics. This page is maintained by Randall Pruim and includes resources for

Statistics

Web Overheads

Occassionally, instead of using overheads, I make information available on web pages (which I then project onto a screen in class). Below are some that may be of general use. Please let me know if you find any errors or have suggestions for improvement.

Overview & Statistical Literacy
- What is statistics?
- Seven Critical Components that determine the soundness of statistical studies. (J. Utts)
- How to Evaluate a Study
  - Common Pitfalls
- Checklist for Statistical Pictures
- Probability Basics
- Two Basic Inference Procedures
- Reports of Hypothesis Tests
Experiments with surveys
To demonstrate both the methodology of experiments and the importance of good question design in surveys, I have made two versions of each of these surveys:
- Survey 2 ( results from Spring 2000)
- Survey 3 ( results from Spring 2000)
Other interesting stuff
- Did the Holocoust really happen? (example of poor wording of a question)
- Researcher to use death camp data: version 1, version 2 (two versions of the same report)
- Biased Questions designed by my class
- Price and income increases (Consumer Price Index, minimum wage, gas prices, college tuition, etc.)

My Demos (webforms, applets, etc.)

These are interactive demos that I have written all or part of for use in my courses. Those that require JAVA are indicated.

Histogram Bin Sizes. See the effect bin size has on the picture a histogram gives. Try it on your own data! [JAVA]
Golf Balls in the Yard. Intro to hypothesis testing, Chi-squared.
Sampling Distributions. Intro to Central Limit Theorem. [JAVA]
Generate random integers in a specified range or random digits. Useful for sampling

Other Demos

These are other interactive demos that I have used

Old Faithful Eruption Times. Investigate histogram bin sizes. (Webster West - S. Carolina)
Normal Distribution Applets from Seeing Statistics. My favorite of these can be used to find the percentage of a normal distribution (with user specified mean and standard deviation) that lies between any two values by dragging the edges of the shaded portion of a normal probability curve.
Sampling Distributions, Confidence Intervals, etc.

Sampling Reese's Pieces
Sampling Distributions Demo displays results of sampling (modest sizes) from normal, skewed, uniform or user-defined distributions. Can display results of several other sample statistics in addition to sample means.
Confidence Intervals Simulator (CUWU) for proportions. Shows error bars for repeated samples from same population.
Confidence Interval Simulator for Means

Correlation Coefficient and Regression Lines.
- Correlation Coefficient Guessing Game. Match correlation coefficients to scatter plots. This is one of several games available from the CUWU Statistics Program
- MSTE Best Fit Applet. Add data points and then try to fit the regression line by hand. Display shows measure of error, equation of hand-drawn line, and will reveal the regression line. Incorrectly refers to equations of lines as "slope", but otherwise very nicely done.
- Workshop Statistics Regression Applet Add and move points and see the effects on the regression line and correlation coefficient.
- Outliers and Regression. See the effects of adding an outlier (Webster West - S. Carolina).
Monty Hall Problem. This problem was made famous by a serious of articles run in the Ask Marilyn column. Here are some demos of the problem:
- This is one of several games available from the CUWU Statistics Program.
- The Let's Make a Deal version done by Webster West includes an explanation.
- The MSTE Monty's Dilemma page adds an extra twist: you may keep you original choice, switch, or flip a coin to decide. This applet also allows you to select one of the three strategies and run it repeatedly and tabulate the results.
For more information about Ask Marilyn, check out the Marilyn is Wrong! website which seeks to document any of her errors but also has interesting information about her and her column.

More JAVA Demos

There are many JAVA applets around to demonstrate various statistical concepts and procedures. The sites below have lists or indexes of such applets.

Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics developed by David lane and others ar Rice University. This site has quite a large index organized by topic.
The CUWU Statistics Program by John Marden at Champaign-Urbana Web University.
Workshop Statistics Applet Collection (in progress): As of January 2000, this contained four applets: simlulation confidence intervals, histogram bin widths, regression lines, and Reese's pieces, all listed above. Nothing else is there yet, but what is there is good. Maybe a site to watch in the future.
Probability (and Statistics) Demos at Cut The Knot, a site with demos from many areas of mathematics.
MSTE JAVA has several applets, some of which are related to statistics, others to other areas of mathematics.
Globally Accessible Statistical Procedures (GASP) collected at the Univ. of South Carolina.
Interesting JAVA Applets compiled at Duke University.
Virtual Laboratories in Probability and Statistics by Kyle Siegrist at Alabama--Hunstville.
JAVA Applets by Balasubramanian Narasimhan at Stanford University.
SurfStat JAVA Applet Hotlist - part of the on-line textbook at University of Newcastle.

Statistics Packages available as JAVA applications

WebStat by Webster West looks a lot like Minitab.
Statlets - a multi-featured JAVA-based statistics package, with free WWW access for small datasets (10 variables x 100 cases). Produced by NWP Associates, Inc.
Statiscope. A one page univariate stat pakage done by Mikael Bonnier - Lund, Sweden.

Stuff for Off-line Stats Packages

Fathom is not available as a JAVA applet, but a demo version is available for download. I have heard great things about Fathom as software for teaching statistics.
Wolfram provides information (and a free pallette) for doing Statistics with Mathematica

Non-JAVA demonstrations

Some Experimental WWW Pages

scatterplot varies as correlation changes

I've Got a Little List

Here are links to some lists of links put together by others.

Statistics and Statistical Graphics Resources maintained by Michael Friendly. Among other things, this site contains a large list of other lists, links for particular software packages, and a large number of links to sources for data.
Robin Lock's list of WWW resources for statistics. Many things on my list come from his, but there are many other things there as well.
Statistical Literacy Related Links Page (put together in conjunction with Jessica Utts' book Seeing Through Statistics

Data, Data, Data

DASL The Dataset and Story Library. A collection of datasets and related documentation (stories). May be searched by data subjects or by statistical techniques.
Journal of Statistics Education Data Archive. Datasets contributed by statistics teachers. Raw data are in a .dat file with explanations a .doc file. Many of these datasets are tied to longer JSE articles discussing their use in statistics classes.
Statlib Dataset Archive
ICPSR has some links to various data sets, mostly from social science research projects.
Robin Lock's list includes a section on where to find data.
a few odd things I have used:
- C.A.N.D.L.E.S. Holocost Museum with links to information about Dr. Mengele and his experiments on twins at Auschwitz.
- Consumer Price Index Data
- Michigan gasoline prices (Courtesy of the American Automobile Association)

Textbooks

Several textbook authors and publishers have a lot of information online that is of use even if you aren't using their textbook. Here are some:

Workshop Statistics by Alan Rossman and Beth Chance (Key Curriculum Press / Springer)
Seeing Through Statistics by Jessica Utts (Duxbury)
Seeing Statistics by Gary H. McClelland uses over 100 JAVA apples to make statistics visual. Four demo applets for normal probabilities are available on the web page.
CyberStats by Jessica Utts (with others) is an online text. Unfortunately, you can't see anything without registering.

Information, Please

Survey 101: A white paper about designing a good survey.
"Do You Believe the Polls?" -- a chat with J.A. Paulos
Places to find articles
- Chance News. Chance News is an electronic newsletter that collects articles about statistics. Often these include interesting questions for discussion in class. It is possible to search past issues as well as to read current issues. Also at this location: links to lectures with audio, video and overheads on a variety of statistics topics.
- New York Times

Videos

I have occassionally made use of videos in my classes. Theses links give either simple time outlines of the videos or (in some cases) questions I have used related to video segments. I have included time outlines of videos that I have previewed, even if I have never used them.

Against All Odds (time outline)
For All Practical Purposes statistics segments (time outline)
Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death? an ABC News special with John Stossel (time outline, discussion questions)
Life by the Numbers (time outline)

Have a great link that should be in this list? Don't send email, fill out a handy form and have your link automatically included in the Brown Dot Resources.

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This page is maintained by Randall Pruim. Please email comments, corrections, suggestions and the like to rpruim@calvin.edu.