WISE: Web Interface for Statistics Education

WISE's website organises a large amount of statistics resources available on the web into one central place. It also is home to a series of interactive, sequenced tutorials on key statistical concepts. The tutorials use dynamic applets that allow the user to explore relationships on their own. Guided exercises are designed to help the learner to take full advantage of the applets to gain a deeper understanding of the concepts and logic that underlie much of inferential statistics. On WISE, you can find WISE tutorials, WISE applets, excel downloads, teaching papers, quick guides, and publications.

Extract

"Objectives

Our goal is to provide easy entry to Internet resources that can be used in support of statistics education and applications. The site includes the following:

  • interactive statistics tutorials
  • answers to questions
  • a jump-off point for connecting to other resources for statistics on the Internet

Instructors will be able to utilize WISE in conjunction with their classes:

  • to supplement their text assignments
  • to provide common examples and practice problems, where students can receive immediate feedback
  • to provide interactive demonstrations

Instructors can ask students to use WISE resources to supplement the textbook and classroom, or they can assign particular topics and questions for the students as homework."

Contents

Tutorials

Introductory Statistical Topics

  • Sampling Distribution of the Mean

    • This tutorial teaches fundamental properties of sampling distributions of means such as accuracy of sample means, probability, and effects of sample size.
  • Investigating the Central Limit Theorem
    • Illustrates the basic principles of the Central Limit Theorem and enhances conceptual understanding of inferential statistics.
  • The Logic of Hypothesis Testing
    • This tutorial serves to introduce the logic of hypothesis testing using z-scores. 
  • Statistical Power
    • This tutorial introduces students to the concepts of statistical power and effect size. 
  • Correlation and Regression
    • This tutorial focuses on statistical methods of describing the co-relatedness of two variables, and how-to use this information to make statistical predictions.
Review Concepts

Specialized Topics

  • An Introduction to Signal Detection Theory
    • In this tutorial, we illustrate the statistical basis of Signal Detection Theory (SDT) and demonstrate the similarities between SDT and Hypothesis Testing. SDT was developed in the psychological research community, but has become popular in fields such as clinical diagnosis and industrial design.
  • Utility and Decision Making
    • This tutorial focuses on statistical methods of decision making under uncertainty. The underlying model assumes bivariate normal distributions, distributions of N:N weights per group, and decision outcomes of varying utility. (Spring, 2003).

Applets (NB Many of these applets are no longer supported. Linked applets are working on the archived WISE website as of July 2020)

  • Sampling Distribution of the Mean
    • This applet teaches fundamental properties of sampling distributions of means such as accuracy of sample means, probability, and effects of sample size.
  • p-z Converter
    • This applet converts probability values to z values and vice versa. The simple version converts only right-tail pand z values. The graphic version allows the user to input left-tail p, raw scores, and the mean and standard deviation of the group of interest.
  • Hypothesis Testing Applet
    • This applet serves to introduce the logic of hypothesis testing using z-scores.
  • Statistical Power
    • This applet introduces the concept of power and the relationship between power and effect size, alpha, and sample size.
  • Confidence Interval Overlap
    • This applet demonstrates how t-test p values are related to amount of overlap of confidence intervals.
  • Confidence Interval Creation
    • This applet illustrates how demonstrate how the population distribution and sample size influence confidence intervals.
  • Correlation and Regression
    • This applet demonstrates how the sum of squared deviations is affected by the fit of the regression line to data points.
  • Signal Detection Theory
    • SDT is a statistical theory of decision making which summarizes a person's ability to discriminate between different classes of items based upon their correct decisions (Hits) versus their Errors (False Alarams). The applet also plots the Receiver-Operating Characteristics.
  • Classification, Utility, and Decision Making
    • An applet which assists in determining group membership based upon test performance, utility of correct and incorrect classification, and population base rates.
  • Bootstrapping
    • This applet can be used to help visualize the resampling method of bootstrapping. "Resamples" from an original sample can be taken one at a time, or 10,000 at once, ultimately providing a 95% confidence interval for the population mean or median.
  • Confidence Interval Game
    • This applet was designed to provide a fun method to learn about p values. Challenge yourself and see how well your estimates match with the real value.

Sources

Claremont Graduate University (n.d.) Web Interface for Statistics Education (WISE), retrieved from http://wise.cgu.edu (accessed July 20, 2020).

Related links

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