Resource Library

The t-distribution activity is a student-based in-class activity to illustrate the conceptual reason for the t-distribution. Students use TI-83/84 calculators to conduct a simulation of random samples. The students calculate standard scores with both the population standard deviation and the sample standard deviation. The resulting values are pooled over the entire class to give the simulation a reasonable number of iterations. This document provides the instructor with learning objectives, context, mechanics, follow-up, and evidence from use associated with the in-class activity.

This activity will allow students to familiarize themselves with technology and its use in calculating marginal, conditional, and joint distributions, as well as making conclusions from these tabular and graphical displays. The corresponding data set 'Pizza Data' is located at the following web address: http://www.causeweb.org/repository/ACT/PIZZA.TXT

This NSF funded project provides worksheets and laboratories for introductory statistics. The overview page contains links to 9 worksheets that can be done without technology, which address the topics of obtaining data, summarizing data, probability, regression and correlation, sampling distributions, hypothesis testing and confidence intervals. The page also contains twelve laboratories that require the use of technology. Data sets are provided in Minitab format.

Song calls for the importance of chance, juxtaposed a variety of statistical terms. May be sung to the tune of "Give Peace a Chance" (John Lennon). Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.

A cartoon to teach how it is important to look at variation, not just averages. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea from Dennis Pearl (The Ohio State University). Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.

An interactive box plot applet that allows users to put in their own data that is part of a large collection of platform independent, interactive, java applets and activities for K-12 mathematics and teacher education.

This page provides distribution calculators for the binomial, normal, Student's T, Chi-square, and Fisher's F distributions. Users set the parameters and enter either the probability or the test statistic and the calculators return the missing value.

This applet demonstrates the Central Limit Theorem. First, select a distribution (Normal, Uniform, Skewed, Custom) and add or delete data points by clicking on the graph. Then, sample from the parent population and the distribution of the sample mean is shown. Users can also choose to see the distribution of the median, standard deviation, variance, and range.

This applet demonstrates the Normal approximation to the Poisson Distribution. Users can set the rate, lambda (‘é), and the number of trials, n, and observe how the shape of the distribution changes. The Poisson distribution is shown in blue, and the Normal distribution is shown in red.

This applet introduces the concept of confidence intervals. Select an alpha level, sample size, and the number of experiments, and click "Play." For each sample, the applet will show the data points as blue dots and the confidence interval as a red, vertical line. The true population mean is shown as a horizontal purple line, and green ovals indicate which intervals do not contain the true mean.