Development of the Interactive Statistical Tutorial Package (ISTP) for Learning Mathematical Concepts of Probability and Statistics

摘要

This thesis demonstrated the feasibility of an alternative pedagogy offered by the ISTP: one that emphasizes visual presentation and mastery of statistical concepts in lieu of the traditional theorem-proof approach to learning statistics. Four statistical topics were selected for the initial implementation of the ISTP: probability distributions, maximum likelihood estimation, transformation of random variables and hypothesis testing. These areas were chosen because they are the main concern of a first course in statistics. The ISTP was designed to provide an intuitive pedagogy rather than to present statistics in a cook-book fashion. The user is encouraged to think while using the ISTP and to relate the results of the ISTP to concepts of statistics. The ISTP is hierarchically constructed so that the beginner can use this package by taking advantage of menu options. For the experienced user, it provides direct macro selection. Furthermore, the more sophisticated user can develop his own library of macros to add to those which already exist in the ISTP.