Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association, August 5-9, 2001
We have developed a model for teaching math-
ematical statistics through detailed case studies,
and we have had some success with students us-
ing the R and S-Plus languages to analyze data
from the cases and to perform simulation studies
of statistical concepts underlying the methods used
in the analyses. We describe a few examples of
these simulation studies, and explain how we use
the computer to bridge the gap between statistical
theory and practice and to develop understanding
of the the basic ideas in mathematical statistics.
Recently, we have embarked on a new approach
that builds on the work of the Omegahat project
(www.omegahat.org), which has embedded the R
statistical software in the Netscape browser. We
are designing interactive environments for browsers
that use R for performing computations and plot-
ting. The goal is to develop electronic activities
that will make it easier for students to explore and
develop understanding of the concepts of statistics
and that will connect these concepts to the practice
of statistics.