Literature Index

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of the spreadsheet on achievement in selected statistical topics and the effects on beliefs about statistics of undergraduate students in an elementary statistics course. This study was instituted as part of the investigator's effort to enhance the statistical experience of undergraduate students. The study sought answers to the following questions: Does the use of the spreadsheet affect students' achievement on every topic selected for the study? Is the level of previous computer experience of students related to their achievement on the topics selected for the study? Does the use of the spreadsheet affect students' beliefs about statistics? Does students' achievement on the topics taught with the spreadsheet approach differ from achievement on the topics taught without the spreadsheet? The investigator conducted the experiment with students in one class at the beginning of the Fall 1999 academic semester in a community college setting. The investigator selected and taught eight Elementary Statistics course topics. The selected eight topics were grouped into two categories of four: topics taught with no spreadsheets and topics presented to students with the aid of spreadsheet files. During class sessions, students used computer labs and the spreadsheet program, Excel 5 and/or Excel 98. The instructor developed the curricular units and the test instruments. Test gains show that the spreadsheet approach to instruction was positively related to student achievement on every topic selected for the study. In addition, students' achievement on tests of topics taught with the spreadsheet was greater than their achievement on tests of topics taught with no spreadsheet. The use of the spreadsheet files seemed to affect students' beliefs about statistics. The analysis of students' responses to the statements on the questionnaire indicated that students were more in agreement with the questionnaire's statements after its second administration at the end of the study than they were after the first administration of the questionnaire.

We have found spreadsheets very useful for teaching statistics, operations research, and other quantitative methods in commerce: students learn quickly when typing and debugging formulae and macros, and get a real feeling for the relation between computation and theory. However, after a while, it is necessary to turn to a more traditional statistical package to find both standard and advanced procedures needed for real-world data examination. WESTAT Associates has developed the MASS system for some years, a stand-alone statistical package of some size and power, and we have used it extensively for teaching, at second course but not at introductory level. In the past six months we (1.5 persons) have ported it to sit on the new spreadsheet WingZ (by Informix Inc) on the Mac to form a new program StatZ, which combines the advantages of a spreadsheet and a specialised program for the teaching and practice of statistics. (See Section 3(ii) for other computers.) Porting a program from one language or machine or system to another is usually a painful exercise. However, the power and flexibility of the "scripting" and of the facilities for linking external code provided by WingZ and its HyperScript macro language, which we have used for incorporating our MASS code into their highly commercial, well-tested base product, seems destined to have a profound effect on related areas of program development. This will yield new research and teaching software, as already pioneered by Apple's HyperCard, the technical precursor of WingZ's HyperScript.

This paper will report about the realisation and use of St@tNet, an interactive internet course on introductory statistics. St@tNet has been realised by a consortium of several French-speaking universities for distance education purposes. After a survey of the resources provided by Internet for teaching statistics, and especially of similar courses, we will present the product and its current use.

Standard distributions are ubiquitous but not unique. With suitable scaling, the graph of a standard distribution serves as the graph for every distribution in the family. The standard exponential can easily be taught in elementary statistics courses.