Resources This resource list is not meant to be comprehensive, rather it is a collection of resources that I have used and found valuable. Many of the texts are difficult to find in Australia, or quite expensive. I have purchased most of them through an Internet bookstore called Amazon.com. I have found their service to be excellent. |
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Texts |
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| Activity-Based Statistics Schaeffer, R.L. et al Springer 0-387-94598-9 |
This book promotes
statistics as a topic to explore and not just read about.
Many carefully designed activities to help the student of
introductory statistics understand statistical concepts. |
| Introduction to the Practice of
Statistics Moore, D.S. and McCabe G.P. Freeman 0-7167-2250-X |
I like this book because the writing is clear, the examples and exercises are relevant and real, and the datasets are included. It comprehensively covers all of the statistics in Maths A, B and C. This book is the #1 statistics textbook in the US. |
| Statistics, Concepts and
Controversies Moore, David. S. Freeman 0-7167-2863-X |
This is the textbook that we should have had for statistics in Maths A. Written for the liberal arts student taking a one semester statistics course, it concentrates on concepts, ethical issues, and statistics from the 'intelligent consumer' point of view. |
| Workshop Statistics (with the
Graphing Calculator) Rossman A.J. and Barr von Oehsen J. Springer 0-387-94997-6 |
This book is very popular with teachers of AP Statistics in the US. It takes an activity-based approach to the learning of statistics. The Graphics Calculator version is a valuable resource for those teachers who don't have ready access to computers. |
| Handbook of Small Datasets Hand, D.J., et al Chapman and Hall 0-412-39920-2 |
This book consists of 500 small datasets, each with its accompanying story. It is a valuable resource for teachers who wish to work with real data. The datasets can be downloaded from the Internet but you'll need the book to find the context. |
| The Visual Display of
Quantitative Information, & Visual Explanations, Tufte, E.R. Graphics Press |
Two exquisite books on graphical elegance and graphical integrity. |
Software |
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| NCSS Jr. 6.0.21 | NCSS Jr is a cut-down version of a
professional statistics package. It has an Excel-like
interface, is easily sufficient for all of the statistics
in Maths A, B and C and best of all, it is absolutely
free! |
| WinStats | This program has some great modules for
introductory statistics and probability, including
simulations of probability experiments, a module for
learning about the effect of outliers and inflential data
values on a line of regression. It is sufficient for all
of the statistics in Maths A, B and C, and is absolutely
free! |
| ActivStats | The best multimedia mathematics CD-ROM
I've seen. It covers all of the statistics topics in
Maths A, B and C, and uses video clips, interactive
modules, still photos, diagrams, music, voice and text to
teach statistics in a highly engaging fashion. Definitely
a best buy for a school's resource collection, and a
worthy addition to any school's collection of mathematics
resources. |
| STEPS | STEPS is a
collection of hypertext-based tutorials which cover a
range of statistics topics. Each tutorial starts with a
real problem and leads the student through the
statistical process needed to provide a solution to the
problem. There are 37 modules available, covering
topics from data description to inference. The tutorials
are of high quality and available at no cost to the
educational user. |
| Task Centre Computer Lessons | A package containing six rich problem
solving investigations, with sofware support for each.
Contact: Curriculum Corporation 141 Rathdowne Street Carlton, Vic 3053 Australia |
| StaTutor | This nifty little freeware MS-DOS
program for statistics demonstrates graphically the
Central Limit Theorem, confidence intervals, regression
and other concepts of inferential statistics. From the
University of Arizona software archive. |
| PQRS | PQRS is a handy little statistics
utility. Choose your distribution (normal, Weibull,
binomial, Poisson, to name a few), input values for the
required parameters (e.g. mean and standard deviation for
the normal distribution), select your sample size, name
the output file and press [OK]. PQRS will generate a
pseudo-random sample drawn from a population with the
requested characteristics. And there's more! Download and install PQRS to find out what else it can do. |
Websites |
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| Journal of Statistics Education | A refereed electronic
journal on post-secondary teaching of statistics, but
many of the articles are suitable for secondary education
also. Highly recommended. |
| Chance Database | The aim of Chance is to make students
more informed and critical readers of current news that
uses probability and statistics as reported in daily
newspaper. Contains an extensive searchable archive of
news articles that relate to probability and statistics. |
| Chance and Data in the News | This website contains articles which
incorporate aspects of statistics, published in the
Hobart Mercury. Each article is accompanied by a
discussion which indicates how the article may be
incorporated into a statistics program. The articles are
classified into five categories - Data Collection and
Sampling, Data Representation, Chance and Basic
Probability, Data Reduction and Inference. The articles
are current and usually based on Australian news. |
| More Links! | More links to statistics resources on
the web, from the Hot
Links page of the Secondary
Mathematics Assessment and Resource Database. |
| Statistics
Jokes More Statistics Jokes |
Did you hear the one about the statistician, the pear and the eyeball..... |
Java Applets |
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| Histogram | This applet teaches students how bin
widths (or the number of bins) affect a histogram. |
| Normal Approximation to the Binomial | Students can see how well the normal
distribution approximates the binomial distribution for
different values of n and p. |
| Linear Regression | The applet teaches students the effect
on a regression line of adding an additional point. |
| Confidence Intervals | The applet helps students understand
confidence intervals. Each of the 50 lines on the graph
represents a confidence interval for the mean. |
| Central Limit Theorem | This applet demonstrates the central
limit theorem using simulated dice-rolling experiments. |
| Statistics Applets | Histograms, T-distribution, binomial distribution, confidence intervals, regression and modelling are some of the applets available. |
| 3-D Scatterplot | Copy and paste in a dataset with three
variables. This site then generates a VRML file for
viewing the data in 3-dimensions, including 'flying'
right in the middle of the data. Great fun. You will need
a VRML browser (which is built into Netscape 3.0) to view
the scatterplot. |
| Let's Make a Deal | The Monty Hall game. Students can play
the game, switching doors or not, and determine the
experimental probability of each option. |
Datasets |
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| Data and Story Library | DASL (pronounced "dazzle") is an online library of datafiles and stories that illustrate the use of basic statistics methods. An invaluable resource for the stats teacher! |
| Journal
of Statistics Education Data Archive |
A large collection of datasets, many with an accompanying article. A great collection of datasets. |
| Handbook of Small Datasets | These are the datasets to accompany the book of the same name. You will need the book to put the data into context. |
| Datasets for NCSS Jr. | A small collection of datasets in NCSS
format, along with their accompanying stories. They have
been selected to support topics in Maths ABC. |
| WorldWatch Institute Database Disk | The WorldWatch Institute gathers information on the state of the world - population the environment, agriculture, etc. The database disk contains a wealth of data, some of gathered since 1950. The cost is about $100 U.S. |
Competition |
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| The Australian Statistics Competition for Schools | Working in teams of 3 to 5 people, students decide on a question of interest, gather data and analyse the data using appropriate techniques. The project is presented in poster format. For further information on this annual competition, contact Ashley Plank, Dept of Mathematics and Computing, University of Southern Queensland, (076) 312 747, plank@usq.edu.au |
Mailing Lists |
The richest resources on the web are the people, willing to share their questions, thoughts and expertise. Joining a statistics education mailing list will put you in contact with a bevy of experts in this field. |
| ap-stat | This list is for teachers of the AP
Statistics course in the US. The content of that course
closely parallels the statistics in Maths ABC in
Queensland, so the list is valuable for teachers here
also. To subscribe, send an email to:
majordomo@etc.bc.ca In place of <email address> above of course should be your own email address (without the angle brackets). All emails sent to this list since January 1995 have been archived. There is a search engine available on this page. |
| edstat-l | This is the premier list of statistics
educators. Many of the messages concern statistics beyond
the high school level, but the members are committed to
quality statistics education and are willing to answer
questions at any level. To subscribe, send an email to: listserv@jse.stat.ncsu.edu Leave the subject line blank. All emails sent to this list since October 1991 have been archived. There is a search engine available on this page. |
| Read
Me First! | Introduction | Acknowledgements | |
Assessment | Datasets | Resources | | Linear Regression | Normal
Distribution | |
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