ActivStats for OS X or Windows

ActivStats is an innovative multimedia product that teaches introductory college-level statistics and the use of our Data Desk 6.3 data exploration package. ActivStats was designed and authored by Paul Velleman, and reflects comprehensive research into how people learn, and specifically how people learn statistics.

Lesson Book

The Lesson Book provides short introductions to activities, icons for launching activities, and access to other navigation tools, such as the index, glossary and table of contents. The Lesson Book introduces activities, sets a goal for each activity, and summarizes the activity when it is completed. Teaching takes place in the activities themselves, not by reading the Lesson Book. It tracks your progress, “checking off” activities as they are completed. Your progress is stored in a Student Progress File, which also stores your name and ActivStats serial number.

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Animated Activities

Guidance from Experienced Teachers Animated Activities are brief (2–3 minute) presentations of a single concept or method. You’ll hear the voice of an experienced teacher, and you’ll see text, pictures, animations, and sounds that explain the subject. Difficult or complex material can be repeated easily.

Guided Analysis

ActivStats includes a student version of the Data Desk statistics program. Data Desk is a graphical interface statistics package that is easy to learn. You will apply each method immediately to real data, helping to reinforce the understanding you have gained from the visualizations and Animated Activities. Data Desk also offers an additional laboratory for simulation experiments. And the ability to work with a powerful statistics program is itself an important skill to learn in a statistics course.

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Homework

Each lesson of ActivStats provides homework exercises. Homework exercises typically provide data and ask questions that employ the methods or concepts of that lesson. Many exercises include datasets and are linked with a mouse click to Data Desk or one of the Teaching Applets.

Teaching Applets

Teaching Applets present specific statistics concepts. Learning by discovery is far more rewarding and effective than learning from lectures. Concepts you discover for yourself are easier to recall and more readily integrated with other understanding. The Teaching Applets are easy to learn and to use, and they are compatible with each other. Many applets are used to teach more than one concept.

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Videos

ActivStat’s videos inspire you to learn and apply concepts and skills to real-world situations. Some segments are excerpted from successful commercial and educational movies and programs. Others have been developed specifically for our product.

Quizzes

Valuable Feedback on Progress Use drag-and-drop quizzes to evaluate your progress and to reinforce what you’ve learned. If you find a quiz difficult, we recommend that you review the activities that precede it in the Lesson Book. The quizzes won’t be checked off in the Lesson Book until you have successfully filled in all the correct answers.