Preface

To the Student

This Student Toolkit serves as a supplement to the Workshop Statistics course books, and as such, contains additional resource material to aid your learning of fundamental statistical concepts, properties, and techniques. We hope that the additional examples, questions, and discussions that accompany each topic will enhance your discovery of the material in Workshop Statistics. We encourage you to work through the open-ended questions the way you would complete similar Workshop Statistics questions: apply your own knowledge first, then use the discussion in the Toolkit to test your understanding.

Most topics in this Toolkit consist of the following components:

• Examples: We begin each Toolkit topic with an example or two illustrating some of the primary ideas and methods of the corresponding Workshop Statistics topic. We have provided spaces following the examples so that you can write out your answers, applying what you learned in the main topic, before you read our explanations of the issues involved or check your work against the detailed solutions we’ve provided.
• Key Concepts: We highlight what we feel are the main ideas within each topic to help you organize and prioritize your knowledge and see the connections between topics.
• Calculation Hints: We offer advice for carrying out the calculations involved in the topic. We hope these hints will further facilitate your work with formulas so you can better focus on the underlying statistical concepts.
• Common Oversights: In our years of teaching with Workshop Statistics, we have seen students make certain mistakes with high frequency. We summarize some of these common errors in hopes of preventing you from falling into the same traps.
• What Went Wrong?: By presenting some erroneous solutions and asking you to identify and explain the errors, we give you additional opportunities in this section to test and clarify your knowledge. Our goal is to help improve your ability to evaluate statistical arguments and to anticipate common pitfalls. Such practice should enhance your own problem-solving skills and further develop your ability to decide if your own answers are reasonable.
• Further Exploration: In many topics we suggest some further activities or problems through which you can continue to explore statistical concepts. Many of these involve using Java applets that have been designed specifically to foster your explorations in a dynamic, visual environment. These applets can be downloaded free of charge at www.rossmanchance.com/applets/.

We hope you will find the discussions and advice in this Student Toolkit practical and supportive for improving your learning and achievement in this course.

Beth L. Chance and Allan J. Rossman
California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, California

To the Instructor

We strongly believe that students better acquire and retain knowledge they have constructed for themselves. Thus, we feel that the main strengths and unique aspects of Workshop Statistics are its discovery-based learning approach, the extensive use of real data, the focus on concepts, and the integration of technology. Yet we recognize that the discovery-based approach, when applied in its purest form, might not work for all students. Therefore, our goal in this Student Toolkit is to provide additional exposition that parallels Workshop Statistics in focus and notation, offering further support to students who need it, while remaining consistent with the strengths of the parent text.

Designed to supplement all five versions of Workshop Statistics: Discovery with Data, the Toolkit provides topic-specific support for students, regardless of which technology is being used. Each Toolkit topic opens with at least one Example that further elucidates concepts and methods developed within the complementary parent text topic. Just as in the parent text, space is allotted so that students can work out their answers on the page and reinforce concepts learned in the classroom. To further assist students, solutions—complete with explanations—are provided.

Every Toolkit topic then continues with three sections—Key Concepts, Calculation Hints, and Common Oversights—all of which endeavor to assist students in organizing and focusing their study of statistical concepts. Following these is What Went Wrong?, a section designed to enhance students’ problemsolving skills by asking students to identify and explain errors present in flawed solutions. Finally, most topics conclude with a section titled Further Exploration, which offers additional activities for students to continue their investigation of difficult statistical concepts. In many instances, students use Java applets, enabling them to explore concepts in a dynamic, visual environment. These applets are available at no cost at www.rossmanchance.com/applets/.

Consistent with Workshop Philosophy?

Some might worry that a student guide such as this inhibits the role of student discovery that is central to Workshop Statistics, but we have constructed this Toolkit so that it enhances rather than diminishes student investigations. Students work through a set of examples in every topic, gaining practice in applying their knowledge and discovering where the holes in their understanding lie. As mentioned above, the What Went Wrong? section provides students with a way to construct their knowledge, allowing them to analyze errors commonly made by others so that those errors can be avoided. Finally, we believe that students will be in an excellent position to learn concepts presented in the Toolkit’s expository passages because the students already will have grappled with them in the corresponding Workshop Statistics activities.

We hope that you find this Toolkit to be a valuable resource for assisting your students’ learning of statistics.