Jingjing Wang & Qian Zhao
 
 

Our topic is the statistical summaries (mean, median, variance, etc.), which are the very basic concepts of statistics. To teach these concepts, we need a web-based textbook in introductory statistics. It should be easy to read and clear, with interactive graphics. In our lecture, we used the electronic textbook Surf and SticiGuy and the teachware tool Internet Statistical Computing Center.

We explored several electronic textbooks and teachware tools (from the papers distributed in the class and other sources) and finally choose the Surf, SticiGuy and Computing Center for our presentation. The followings are the textbooks and tools we have browsed and the reasons why we decided to use Surf, SticiGuy and Internet Statistical Computing Center and not the others.

Electronic Textbook

(1). Media Activities Book for Moore $ McCabe's Introduction to the Practice of Statistics (http://ww3.whfreeman.com/test/statistics/applets.html)
 

The textbook has only 5 applets (Mean and Median, Normal Curve, Displaying/Describing --One Variable Distributions, Correlation and Regression, Expected Value), all of them are interactive graphics that can be used for hands-on experience for students. The mean and median applet could be used to compare mean and median in our lecture. But we did not use it since the Surf has the similar applet.

(2). Surfstat (http://surfstat.newcastle.edu.au/surfstat/gateway.cgi)

This is a web-based course in elementary statistics. It includes an extensive glossary, interactive exercises, JavaScript functions replacing statistical probability tables, and the beginnings of a set of Java applets demonstrating statistical concepts through dynamic graphics.

We selected it as main teaching tool in our presentation because its definition of mean and median is very easy and clear for beginners. There are examples to illustrate the concepts and comparison of mean and median are made. The interesting interactive graphics enable the students to compare the mean and the median thus understand the conclusion given in the text. Moreover, it also includes Progress Check for the students to learn the concepts more clearly. Since the concepts of mean and median are the very basic concepts in statistics, so we think this textbook is good enough to be used to give the lecture.

(3). SticiGuy (http://www.stat.Berkeley.EDU/users/stark/SticiGui/Text/index.htm)

This is also a web-based course in introductory statistics. It is interactive. We can do numerical experiments, analyze data, and manipulate plots to teach fundamental statistical and probabilistic concepts to students. And the textbook encourages students to do practice exercises in the text. The practice exercises are graded instantly, and detailed solutions are one click away. It provides homework graded automatically and a unique version of each problem set and exam for each student so that they can work at his or her own pace.

In addition, the world-wide web is integrated into the course in many ways, including links to sites of statistical interest, links to a glossary of terms dynamic examples and self-test exercises that change each time a student visits a chapter online, machine-graded, reference and practice materials to prepare for exams, etc.

However, because its definition about mean and median is not as compact and clear as that of Surf, they were not selected to introduce the concepts of mean and median. And we just select some of its exercises in our lecture.

(4). UCLA Statistics Electronic Textbook (http://www.stat.ucla.edu/textbook/)

UCLA statistics electronic textbook has components that can be used for all levels of statistics learning. There are materials related to the teaching of 'Mean and Median'. However, there is no interactive graphics related to this topic. Or probably we need Xlisp-Stat locally to see those interactive graphics. There is also a problem of some of the webpages in this site. Once you enter the webpages, you can not leave these webpages.

(5). Seeing Statistics (http://www.seeingstatistics.com/)

This is a wonderful book for introductory statistics. It is easy to read, well organized with a lot of interactive graphics in the text. However, the full text is not available for a guest. So the materials introducing the summary statistics, mean and median are not available.

(6). Electronic textbook by Statsoft (http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stathome.html)

This textbook is very complete. It is like a classical encyclopedia of statistics. There are totally 37 contents in this textbook. It is not an introductory textbook of statistics. There are a lot of graphics in this webbook to illustrate the concepts and principles. However, most of the graphics are not interactive. Also most pages in this webbook are too long that the reader need to scroll down deeply to find the concerned items. This is a kind of inconvenient for a beginner.

(7). Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/rvls.html)

There is a webbook 'HyperStat Online' in this site. This book is for introductory statistics. There are materials related to our topics 'Mean and Median'. However, to see the interactive graphics, one needs a browser which support Java 1.1. So we didn't choose it because we are not sure if the interactive graphics can be seen in the computers in the classroom.

Teachware Tools

(1). UCLA Statistical Calculators (http://www.stat.ucla.edu/calculators/)

The UCLA Statistical Calculator is a good teaching tool on the web. It provides various statistical calculators such as Power Calculator, SASculator, Regression and GLM Calculator, Random Permutations, Random Permutations, Random Permutations, Q-Q Plot Maker and RGB Calculator, etc. These calculators are easy to use. Data can be entered via different ways, e.g. typing directly, copy and paste, browse the local computer. These calculators can be used to compute various statistics. So we can use them to demonstrate the examples of computing summary statistics to students so as to help them to understand the abstract concepts.

The UCLA Statistical Calculator is a very helpful teaching tool. However, it also has some disadvantages. First, most of the calculators just like a black box, you enter the data and got results, but can’t see the process since no explain of the concepts are given in these calculator. Second, if there are more examples it will be better. Finally, if the graphics is more colorful, it will be more interesting for the students.

However, there is no specific calculator can be used to calculate only statistical summary (mean, median, variance…) that we are interested in our lecture. So we did not use it in our lecture.

(2) Internet Statistical Computing Center (http://www.sgcorp.com/index.htm)

This is a wonderful teachware tool. It is interactive, dynamic and colorful. The web pages are colorful and bright, which is attractive for students to do hands-on experience. The most important thing is we found the calculator for statistical summary (mean, median, variance…). So we selected it to show the student how to compute the statistical summary using a calculator.

Conclusions:

We decided to use both web-based textbook and teachware tool because the combination of them provides the students more ways to learn the concepts. The textbook shows them the definitions and a couple of examples. The teachware is used to strengthen their impression by doing interactive exercises and doing more practice after class.

Compare to the "classical’ lecture with board and textbook, the electric textbook has following advantages:

First, the web, combined with interactive statistical visualizations, provides an improved means of learning statistical concepts and principles.

Second, the electronic textbooks provide interactive examples and exercises that are quick and easy to access.

Thirdly, traditional methods of conveying data to students, such as writing on a chalkboard or piece of paper, have several limitations such as slow if the data set is big. On the contrary, the web-based tool allows quick and easy entry of data via various means such as copy and paste, browser local computer for prepared data.

However, there maybe mistakes and misleading materials in electronic textbooks and teachware tools. For example, the answer of Exercise 1 in Chapter2 in SticiGui is wrong. And sometimes the result of interactive graphics may make students confused. So we should give more direction to the students when using electronic textbooks and teachware tool. The access of internet is depend on the reliability of server, line and local computer, so there is always the risk of not being able to log on the website.