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Copyright (c) 2003
by
The McGraw-Hill Companies
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LearningStats was.published by McGraw-Hill early 2003. To order a single copy of LearningStats, go to http://books.mcgraw-hill.com and enter the ISBN 0-07-288510-6 in the search window. The price is $32.50 plus tax/shipping. Telephone orders are 1-800-262-4729. Instructors can order an examination copy of LearningStats through their McGraw-Hill or Irwin area representative.
LearningStats is a CD to be purchased by students as a supplement to their introductory statistics textbook. Prices are set so it will retail for about $15 when packaged with a McGraw-Hill/Irwin statistics textbooks. So what do you get? Click on these sample screens to get a preview.
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These are examples, case studies, classroom demonstrations, and do-it-yourself exercises for introductory statistics students. They utilize Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. Instructors can use them for lectures, or can assign them to students for self-study and/or independent projects. The math level is not high, but these are not “workbook” exercises (i.e., they invite further inquiry and require that students structure the inquiry themselves). They provide a complement to typical textbook problems.
Many of the case studies are simulations (e.g., for sampling).
Only Excel, Word, and PowerPoint are needed. The case studies contain data and exercises.
Throughout, there is an emphasis on learning data analysis and features
of Excel that will be helpful in other classes and in the student’s career.
There are Minitab examples, for those who use Minitab.
Demonstrations are in a folder called ClassDemos (303 files, 41 MB
total). Files are organized by
topic in 20 subfolders, following a sequence suited for an introductory
statistics class (e.g., Unit
01 Methodology,
Unit 02 Report Writing, Unit
03 Using Excel, Unit 04
Descriptive Statistics, …). Within each
folder, the file names suggest the topic (e.g., OneSampleTests.xls, ConfidenceBands.xls, …).
Minitab examples are shown in many case studies.
When the cursor rests on a file name, a tool tip pops up with further
information (e.g., topic, number of cases or years, etc.) so you can decide
whether to open the file or not.
Case studies cover many application areas. Topics are balanced, though with strong coverage of descriptive statistics, estimation, hypothesis tests, regression, time-series, and forecasting. There are also units on writing, using Excel, simulation, and goodness of fit tests. Examples of actual student PowerPoint presentations are included in some units.
These are rich databases and data sets, many of them collected by students. Effort has been made to include a variety of subject areas. They are in a folder called ClassData (340 Excel spreadsheets, 18 MB of data, thousands of variables). Files are grouped by data type (Cross-Sectional Data or Time-Series Data) and within data types by topic (e.g., Food, Health, …). Files are named so that the title suggests the topic (e.g., IceCream.xls, HousingStarts.xls, …). When the cursor rests on a file name, further information pops up (e.g., data description, number of years or cases, etc.) so that you can decide whether to open the file or not. In many data sets, short file names are provided to facilitate import of data into Minitab. Data includes many survey databases and time-series variables (mostly economic but also education, sports, crime, and so on).
There is a lot of stuff on this CD.
The design goal has been to give you access to things that are not in
your textbook or its various supplements. The
underlying premises are that
·
students like Excel (and have it at work, home, etc.)
·
you don’t have time to develop your own demonstrations and data
sets
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students like to learn on their own (maybe at 3 AM)
Exercises
Instructors can invite students to choose LearningStats
modules as extra credit projects when they ask “How can I improve my grade?”
They could turn in a written report on their exploration of a data set or
a demonstration. Students say that
the cases and exercises often are more interesting than the textbook.
Further, because most of the data sets are real, students can also learn
things about the world at the same time they learn statistics (e.g., slavery,
Presidents’ ages, literacy, crime, etc.).
Study Aids
You can print the PowerPoint presentations and writing guidelines
as study aids or for exam review. Many
of the cases have preset print formats so that the main screens will print
nicely.
Tables
There are some excellent tables that can be reproduced for in-class
exams (e.g., binomial, Poisson, normal, Student’s t, chi-square, F).
Curious students can see you these probabilities are calculated in Excel.
Simulations
So...