Welcome to WebScholar--Statistics and Research Methods on the Web

Welcome to WebScholar 1.1

WebScholar 1.1 is a set of Java (JDK1.1) applets that can be viewed in Netscape or Internet Explorer (4.0 or higher)*.

This is a beta release of applets that interactively teach statistics and research methods on the web. Please see below for bug reports.

This page is permanently (sigh!) under construction.

Charting applet
Explore data graphically! Examine data through bar charts, histograms, pie charts, 2D and 3D scatterplots.

Some datasets that are currently available:

Are men more likely to be left-handed compared to women? Are left-handed people better in their sense of direction compared to right handed people? Check out for yourself with handedness being coded by the B-N scale (positive scores indicate right handedness). This dataset is contained in SpatialAbility.txt. You can chart this dataset using bar charts, pie charts, and histograms.
Is the liking for chocolate correlated with environmental or hereditary influences? View simple and multiple regression scatter plots to explore this relationship.

Data transformation applet

What happens conceptually when you add a constant number to each score (or you change the entire data to zscores)? Explore this graphically with this applet.

Calculation applet

Test your understanding of the computation of various statistics such as the one-way and two-way F statistic, multiple regression statistics, as well simpler statistics such as the mean, standard deviation, etc. Use the TwoWayANOVA dataset for the calculation two way analysis of variance (F).

Experiments applet

Participate in "classic" psychology experiments.

Experiments that are available:

Picture memory: This experiment tests whether when you judge pictures for meaning, they are remembered better than when pictures are judged for their physical characteristics (such as the number of lines in the image). This is a classic finding in the study of memory.
Word/Nonword decisions: This experiment introduces you the lexical decision task (where you have to judge whether an item on the screen is a word or nonword). In psychology, this task has been used extensively to examine the nature of semantic memory, and to address the process by which we recognize words.

Sampling distributions applet

Do you know how to construct a sampling distribution for a particular statistic? Create a sampling distribution, and then compare it to theoretical sampling distributions (such as the t, the F, binomial and chi-square distributions).

What to expect in the future:

These applets you see in WebScholar will eventually be embedded within the context of a module, where you can participate in an experiment, and then analyze the data generated from the same experiment (with other people) with the appropriate statistical test. The statistical test is therefore described within an applied, experimental context. To check out the context, you can click on these links. Be warned however, that each module consists of more than 30 web pages that describe concepts related to statistics and research methods! To preview the modules, click here.

Last updated: July, 1999

Contributors and Acknowledgements:

Java, Javascript authored by Kavitha Srinivas, Associate Professor, Boston College

Content of the course...to be added (in alphabetical order):

Hiram Brownell, Associate Professor, Psychology, Boston College
Lisa Feldman-Barrett, Assistant Professor, Psychology, Boston College
Marianne LaFrance, Professor, Psychology, Boston College
Jeanne Sholl, Associate Professor, Psychology, Boston College
Kavitha Srinivas, Associate Professor, Psychology, Boston College

HTML and graphics enhancements: Ellen Bronchetti, Scott Kinder, Mark Siekowski, & Mike Jeffries, Boston College

We thank the Davis foundation for their support of this project.

Send bug reports to Kavitha.Srinivas@bc.edu. Please report the exact conditions under which you found the bug.

* If you are using a proxy server, use IE instead of Netscape.