Dynamic, Interactive Statistical Research Papers on the Web

摘要

Statisticians use the Internet and the World Wide Web to exchange e-mail and toview, retrieve and distribute research papers, data sets, source code and other materials. In addition to the text, data, and graphs in paper reports, electronic papers can include sound, animation, video and other computer based media products that can improve the presentation of the results. Recently it has become possible to embed executable content programs into electronic documents. A statistician can now write computer programs to perform calculations described in the paper, embed the code in the paper, and distribute the paper over the Internet. Any reader can execute the code locally and interact with the program. This capability transforms a static presentation of research results into a presentation that can be dynamic and interactive. This paper describes how the new capability can change the way statistical research is conducted. An illustration is given from the vision research field. In this real life problem, researchers need to estimate the parameters of the ellipses that best fit particular data sets. Our software allows any researcher with a browser to compute the parameters, get estimates of standard errors, and draw pictures to illustrate the quality of the fit.