Lesson 1: How to use this book

Homework (to be turned in for credit):

Write a short paragraph that answers two questions:

  1. Why are you taking this course?
  2. What do you expect to get out of it?

Now start up ActivStats and get to Lesson 1 at "1-1 Introduction".  You can go through the Lesson 1 using ActivStats alone, or you can switch back and forth between ActivStats and this little guide by keeping them in two windows on your PC.

You are now embarking on the process of reading the on-line textbook.  This will be your primary means for acquiring this course's concepts and methods.  Because of this, it is important that you click on all the clickable icons you see in every lesson, and be led through the material systematically and completely.
 

Read everything!
Complete all activities!
Do all exercises!

because . . .

ActivStats is the primary learning tool for this course

There are several types of icons to click on, representing several types of activities.  Here are three of the most important ones.

Activities

Expositions marked by 
green chalk		 Are "lectures" over new material.
Exercises marked by a pencil Allow you to test your own understanding of the expositions.  They are interactive.  Be sure and do them;  they will be a good source of questions for our daily quizzes.
Data Desk 
Activities		 marked by a 
magnifying glass		 Data Desk is the statistical analysis software you will use for dealing with large data sets.  It moves the burden of doing large amounts of calculation from you to the computer.  You will get to a special Data Desk window when you are using this application.  You can always return to ActivStats proper by closing the Data Desk window.

I will introduce other icons as needed.  Notice that 1-1 consists mainly of two expositions.

When you have read the text and absorbed the expositions in 1-1, you can click on the lower right-hand corner of the window to go on to "1-2 Activities".  "1-2" is still Lesson 1, which has been broken up into 6 sub-lessons.

You should now be looking at "1-2 Activities".  Notice that this page has one exposition, one exercise, and one Data Desk activity.  Complete them all.

Go through all 6 sub-lessons, completing all.  You can go back to a previous sub-lesson by clicking the left arrow on the Control Bar at the top of the page.

I leave the rest of the exposition to the ActivStats  itself.  Please write down any questions or confusions you might have and raise them in class.

Go to Lesson 2.
 

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