The primary purpose of the WISE site is to help teachers and learners of statistics to take advantage of the incredible resources freely available on the Internet and the special interactive capability that these resources provide.
Dynamic interactive applets allow students to try their own ‘What if…’ scenarios. Yet to be most effective, students need guidance for using and interpreting exercises.
WISE Guides is a collection of resources we developed to supplement our applets and tutorials. We will continue to add resources to the WISE site and we welcome your suggestions.
Using WISE Tutorials
Each WISE tutorial includes suggestions for how that tutorial may be used for instruction. The tutorials are modular to provide flexibility. These tutorials cover introductory statistics concepts such as hypothesis testing, sampling distributions, and statistical power. Most tutorials feature interactive applets that allow students to simulate statistical techniques such as sampling in order to see how different parameters affect relevant statistics.
The tutorials can be used as laboratory exercises with faculty supervision or they can be assigned as independent homework. Some tutorials have worksheets and follow-up questions that students can turn in for faculty evaluation.
The tutorials are designed to supplement other teaching materials, addressing specific topics that are difficult to present with traditional classroom technologies. The tutorials promote self-paced learning and provide a means for reviewing and exploring concepts.
Instructors’ Notes explain how the tutorials can be used in class settings:
- Sampling Distribution of the Mean
- Central Limit Theorem
- Hypothesis Testing
- Power
- Signal Detection Theory
Using WISE Applets
The WISE applets can be used for classroom demonstrations separately from the tutorials.
Tips for Using Applets for Demonstrations:
Excel Downloads
Statistical Distributions
- StatWISE – basic distributions and more. You can download this Excel workbook to have easy access to basic statistics distributions on your computer. The workbook includes Z, t, F, chi-square, and binomial distributions as well as selected computations such as estimating the median for grouped data.
Demonstrations Using Excel
- Failure of the t-test
- t vs. Z demonstration
- Detecting outliers
- Collinearity demonstration
- Suppression demonstration
- Plotting regression interactions
- Odds ratio vs. risk ratio
- Maximize utility in classification decisions
Short Papers on Selected Topics
Analysis of Variance
- Introduction to One-Way ANOVA (explains the logic of ANOVA)
Regression
- Introduction to Multiple Regression
- SPSS Step-by-Step Regression Introduction
- Regression Calculations with Excel
- Hierarchical Regression – Gender and Faculty Salary
- Helen of Troy – Beauty and Intelligence (fun demonstration of regression applications)
- Equivalence of ANOVA and Regression
- Introduction to Logistic Regression
Special Topics
- SPSS Data Screening, Transformations
- Introduction to Resampling Techniques
- Getting Started with R and RStudio
- Change Score Analysis vs. ANCOVA
Quick Guides
Downloading Data from ICPSR
The WISE Quick Guide to Downloading Data from ICPSR provides step-by-step guidance for downloading data in SPSS format from the very extensive collection maintained by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).
SPSS Macro Guide
Here you can find a Quick Guide to SPSS Macros describing what an SPSS macro is, what it can do for you, and how to use one in SPSS.
Using G*Power
G*Power 3 is free software for power analysis. Our G*Power quick guide gives an overview and examples of how to use the program, as well as a link to download it.
Selected WISE Publications
Aberson, C. L., Berger, D. E., Emerson, E. P., & Romero, V. (1997) WISE: A web interface for statistics education. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 29, 217-221.
Aberson, C. L., Berger, D. E., Healy, M . R., Kyle, D., & Romero, V. L. (2000). Evaluation of an interactive tutorial for teaching the Central Limit Theorem. Teaching of Psychology, 27, 289-291.
Aberson, C. L., Berger, D. E., Healy, M. R., & Romero, V. (2001) Teaching statistics with web-technology: The WISE project. Syllabus, 14(7), 43-45.
Aberson, C.L., Berger, D.E., Healy, M.R., & Romero, V.L. (2002). An interactive tutorial for teaching statistical power. Journal of Statistics Education [online], 10 (3).
Aberson, C.L., Berger, D.E., Healy, M.R., & Romero, V.L. (2003). Evaluation of an interactive tutorial for teaching hypothesis testing concepts. Teaching of Psychology, 30, 76-79.
Healy, M.R., Berger, D.E., Romero, V.L., Aberson, C.L., & Saw, A. (2002). Evaluating JAVA applets for teaching on the Internet. Proceedings of the Scuola Superiore G. Reis Romoli Advances in Infrastructure for e-Business, e-Education, e-Science, and e-Medicine on the Internet International Conference.
Romero, V. L., Berger, D. E., Healy, M. R., & Aberson, C. L. (2000). Using cognitive learning theory to design effective on-line statistics tutorials. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 32, 246-249.
Sosa, G.W., Berger, D.E., Saw, A.T., & Mary, J.C. (2010). Effectiveness of Computer-Assisted Instruction in Statistics: A Meta-Analysis. Review of Educational Research, 81(1), 97-128.
Pre-WISE Publications
Jolicoeur, K., & Berger, D. E. (1986). Do we really know what makes educational software effective? A call for empirical research on effectiveness. Educational Technology, 26(12), 7‑11.
Jolicoeur, K., & Berger, D. E. (1988a). Implementing educational software and evaluating its academic effectiveness: Part I. Educational Technology, 28(9), 7-13.
Jolicoeur, K., & Berger, D. E. (1988b). Implementing educational software and evaluating its academic effectiveness: Part II. Educational Technology, 28(10), 13-19.
