Contributed Paper C270
In session C8A (Wednesday 11th, 11:00-12:30, Level 3 - Conference Room B)Taming Statistics for Students with APL
Presenter
Stephen Mansour (United States)Abstract
Statistics can be overwhelming for students due to the vast number of functions available in many software packages. In the computer language APL, “operators” are higher order functions which modify or combine existing functions to produce new functions. These operators allow us to use a reduced set of functions to produce a wide variety of useful results, using expressions which are surprisingly English-like. This approach simplifies the teaching – and learning – of statistics using software, by dramatically reducing the vocabulary that a student needs to master, and clarifying the fundamental principles of entry-level statistics. A working software program, TamStat, with a user interface and an optional interface to “R” has been implemented in Dyalog APL.