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Thomas Augustin, Carolin Strobl, Interactive Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, Biometrics, Volume 62, Issue 2, June 2006, Pages 625–626, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0420.2006.00589_1.x
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Einstein is often quoted as saying that “Everything should be said as simple as possible.” This motto particularly applies to teaching statistics to students of behavioral sciences, which is perceived as a great challenge due to students' heterogeneity concerning background knowledge and motivation. Although there is a huge range of books offered for this purpose, new ideas and concepts are still welcome and could be quite fruitful. Pepper Williams has started a very ambitious project. He has developed a Web-based, interactive introduction to statistics. The basic text, which is also printed as a textbook, is supplemented by many features using up-to-date software technology.
Williams claims to “employ a radically different pedagogical approach” to get the reader involved intensively and interactively; at important steps the reader has to answer questions before (s)he can continue. In addition, at the end of every chapter there are review exercises, where the reader can also check her/his solutions. A special feature is that these examples are “regenerative,” which means that they can be repeated with different numbers until the student feels safe with his/her calculations. Calculations can be done by the Calculation Tool. The figures are interactive, too, which allows the student to do simple ceteris paribus (“what if?”) comparisons, helpful for learning the effect that variations of important parameters may have. At any moment basic concepts can easily be recalled from the glossary. When the book is used for a course, it is also possible to add course-specific information, which is only available with the specific course ID.
