As a result, each student moves at his own pace, working with Activities when ready and repeating them as needed. ActivStats deals with one concept at a time. The student's understanding of each concept is solidified before she moves on to the next one. Each Activity deals with a single concept or a few tightly related concepts in a single, consistent way. This approach helps students to fit each new idea into their growing understanding of statistics.
Students learn to do what statisticians and data analysts actually do.
They apply their newly learned skills to real data and interpret the results in meaningful ways. Students leave the course with practical computer-based skills and, if they own the ActivStats CD, with a functional statistics package. Students discover for themselves many of the key ideas of statistics. Discovered concepts are easier to retain and tend to fit together into a coherent whole more completely. In the challenging areas of probability and inference, ActivStats treats the computer as a laboratory for random phenomena, providing truly random experimental results.