Resource Library

Chance News reviews current issues in the news that use probability or statistical concepts. Its aim is to give the general public a better understanding of chance news as reported by the media and to allow teachers of probability and statistics courses to liven up their courses with current chance news.

This site is a tutorial that takes students through a mayoral election process while discussing the concept of randomness. Topics include margin of error and confidence levels.

This short article discusses how the comparative ratios of the tails of normal distributions can result in bias in hiring practices. It contains a link to an applet that shows the comparative tail probability ratios.

This excerpt from Engineering Statistics Handbook gives a definition for and examples of outliers. A sub-page also discusses Grubbs' Test for Outliers

This text document lists detailed learning objectives for introductory statistics courses. Learning objectives are brief, clear statements of what learners will be able to perform at the end of a course. These objectives were developed for a one semester general education introductory statistics course. The objectives cover the broad categories of Graphics, Summary Statistics, The Normal Distribution, Correlation and Scatterplots, Introduction to Regression, Two way Tables, Data Collection and Surveys, Basic Probability, Sampling Distributions, Confidence Intervals, Tests of Hypothesis, and T-distributions.

Users can select from detailed tables and geographical comparison tables to generate data from the 2000 Census.

This Flash applet provides an introduction to simple linear regression for introductory statistics students. It combines a brief narrated animation with an interactive scatterplot function. Students are able to place points on the scatterplot by clicking with a mouse or typing X-Y coordinates. Students use these points to learn about the best fit line by placing a guess on the plot and comparing it with the least squares line. Students also learn about the value of the correlation coefficent and points that would be considered outliers. Students may also specify a value of x (within the range of the data) and obtain the resulting predicted value.

The Pew Research Center For The People & The Press data archive page contains links to downloadable versions of the Center's survey data which are currently available on the web. Survey data are released six months after the reports are issued and are posted on the web as quickly as possible.

This site is a collection of data that contains the results of the Olympic track and field events. It contains the times not only of the winners, but of all the contestants.

This site offers a list of sample questions that can be used when teaching basic probability concepts, probability distributions, data collection methods, inferential statistics, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance, regression analysis, or problem sensing related to descriptive statistics. Links to the answers are also provided. Application is not limited to business.