Many lessons employ discovery learning. You discover concepts for yourself by working with an appropriately designed visualization or simulation tool. Concepts discovered yourself are much easier to recall and to integrate with what you already understand. Concepts learned in this way include such traditionally difficult ideas as the Law of Large Numbers, the Central Limit Theorem, the concept of a Sampling Distribution, and the reasoning of Hypothesis Tests. ActivStats provides honest random simulations for studying random phenomena, probability, and inference.
Most activities use several communication channels to convey ideas.
For example, narration is synchronized with the animated appearance of words and formulas or movement by a visualization tool. Narrated presentations pause after no more than a minute to engage the learner and invite participation. Because a sequence of activities frequently leads to a practical application to real data, ActivStats provides authentic instruction. That is, you learn to do what you will do with this material directly rather than simulating it with the computer. ActivStats can support learning the material in the introductory course by itself or in concert with a textbook.