Features of software tools that can support learning and doing statistics in introductory courses are the focus of this paper. We will start with describing assumptions concerning the direction in which introductory statistics education should move and improve, which are discussed in more detail elsewhere (e.g. Biehler (1992); Biehler (1993); Gordon & Gordon (1992); Thisted & Vellemann (1992)). Our notion of introductory statistics education comprises the teaching of "stochastics" within mathematics education in schools and data analysis in other school subjects. After that, we will discuss requirements of software in more detail, and how we integrated requirements in the paper-and-pencil prototype of the MEDASS-project in Biehler & Rach (1992).
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education