Many introductory courses teach traditional probability concepts.
The objectives of these courses may be better met by emphasizing characteristics of random variation rather than formal probability. To illustrate a different approach, some alternative concepts and related activities are described and discussed. This article presents a novel arrangement of the table that allows p-values to be determined quite precisely from a table of manageable size. This is the premise underlying an effort of the authors to produce and use a collection of hands-on activities that illustrate the basic concepts of statistics covered in most introductory college courses. Such activities promote the teaching of statistics more as an experimental science and less as a traditional course in mathematics.