Other

  • This article focuses on a two treatment, two period, two treatment sequence crossover drug interaction study of a new drug and a standard oral contraceptive therapy. Both normal theory and distribution-free statistical analyses are provided along with a notable amount of graphical insight into the dataset. For one of the variables, the decision on the presence or absence of a drug interaction is reversed depending on whether the normal theory or the distribution-free analysis is favored. The data also contain statistically significant period effects, statistically significant but clinically unimportant treatment effects, some modest degree of structural nonnormality; and modest to more extreme outliers. This and 28 other pedagogically useful datasets can be found at www.math.iup.edu/~tshort/Bradstreet.

  • The video lottery terminal dataset contains observations on the three windows of an electronic slot machine for 345 plays together with the prize paid out for each play. The prize payout distribution is so badly skewed that confidence intervals for expected payout based on the central limit theorem are not accurate. This dataset can be used at the graduate or upper undergraduate level to illustrate parametric bootstrapping. The dataset can also be used in a graduate course to illustrate tests of independence for two and three-way contingency tables involving random zeroes, or these tables may be collapsed and used as examples in an introductory course.

  • A recent symposium on "Improving the Work Force of the Future: Opportunities in Undergraduate Statistics Education" was held to focus attention on the importance of undergraduate statistics education. The symposium and the approval of curriculum guidelines for undergraduate degrees by the Board of Directors of the American Statistical Association have done much to define the current state of undergraduate education in statistics and suggest directions for improvement. This article summarizes the activities leading up to the symposium and provides a brief summary of six papers from the symposium that have been published. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the outstanding issues that remain to be addressed.

  • Representatives from academia, industry, and government met in May 1999 and in April 2000 at the ASA Headquarters to discuss issues concerning undergraduate education in statistical science. One outcome of these meetings was the symposium entitled "Improving the Workforce of the Future: Opportunities in Undergraduate Education," held August 12 through 13, 2000, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Among the topics discussed in the meetings and at the symposium were guidelines for minor programs in statistical science. This article summarizes the results of these discussions.

  • The dataset "Career Records For All Modern Position Players Eligible For The Major League Baseball Hall of Fame" contains information for the 1340 major league baseball players who had retired prior to the 1993 season and who were eligible for the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame (had played in at least ten seasons). Traditional performance measures included are number of seasons played, games played, official at-bats (AB), runs scored, hits (H), doubles (2B), triples (3B), home runs (HR), runs batted in (RBI), walks (BB), strikeouts (SO), batting average (BA), on base percentage (OBP), slugging percentage (SLG), stolen bases (SB), times caught stealing (CS), fielding average (FA), and primary position played (POS). In addition, the following composite measures are included: adjusted production (AP), batting runs (BR), adjusted batting runs (ABR), runs created (RC), stolen base runs (SBR), fielding runs (FR), and total player rating (TPR). Finally, the dataset includes an indication of whether or not each player has been admitted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame and, if so, under what set of rules he was admitted.

  • The 1969-2000 Major League Baseball Attendance dataset contains Runs Scored, Runs Allowed, Wins, Losses, Number of Games Behind the Division Leader, and Home Game Attendance of each major league franchise for the 1969 through 2000 seasons. Also included for each franchise are its location, league affiliation (National or American), and division affiliation (East, Central, or West). These data have been used in a project-based modeling course to instruct students in basic data management, the use of exploratory data analysis to "clean" data, and construction of regression models. The dataset, which is both cross-sectional and time-series, is of a manageable size and easily understood. Furthermore, it provides a useful, interesting, and realistic classroom example for discussing many important statistical concepts.

  • A certain dataset, giving population at risk and fatalities for "an unusual episode," has been used for some time in classrooms as an elementary exercise in statistical thinking, the challenge being to deduce the context of the data. Unfortunately, the "solution" has frequently been circulated orally, with few details. Moreover, discrepancies have been found between the dataset and the "solution," which would render the exercise somewhat artificial. This paper investigates the discrepancies and includes a fully-explained version of the dataset for classroom use.

  • These proceedings contain lectures concerned with problem solving, applications of undergraduate mathematics, and aspects of current research in mathematics. The four working groups considered: (1) the role of feelings in learning mathematics; (2) the problem of rigor in mathematics teaching; (3) microcomputers in teacher education; and (4) the role of microcomputers in developing statistical thinking. Additionally, the two topic groups considered natural language and mathematics in human evolution and gender differences in learning outcomes on the Second International Mathematics Study. (PK)

  • The author presents guidelines for the selection of statistical analysis software given to graduate students to work independently. Criteria for a good teaching program are delineated. Several software programs are evaluated: STATMASTER, Statistics and Probability, Monte Carlo Simulations, Survey Sampling, KEYSTAT, CAPSAS: Computer Assisted Program for the Selection of Appropriate Statistics, EDA: Exploratory Data Analysis, INTROSTAT, Statistics With Finesse, STATPAC, GANOVA: Generalized Analysis of Variance, Speedstat, Micro-DSS/Analysis, and Micro-TSP. Several statistics packages are briefly reviewed, including STATPRO, A-STAT, Computer Models for Management Science, Multiple Factor Analysis, a General Correlation Program, and Test Construction Package. An appendix lists criteria for evaluating software. Demonstration pages prepared with a TEXPRINT printer interface card in the APPLE II+ computer are included. (DWH)

  • Discusses the creation of assistance software for the social sciences that will allow the undertrained or untrained to perform statistical analyses and research methods. Three areas are proposed as major contributors to the development of easier to use assistance software: (1) authoring software with a variety of instructional and learning applications, (2) the new, inexpensive multimedia capabilities of sound, animation, pictures, and motion video that allow the users to use all their senses in the learning process, and (3) the ability to link scattered software operations and resources into an automated whole. Examples of current hardware and software tools within each of the 3 areas are examined. (PsycLIT Database Copyright 1994 American Psychological Assn, all rights reserved)

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