CougarStats is a free and open-source R Shiny app to support statistical data analysis and enhance learning. This browser-based tool is designed with a user-friendly interface and covers a range of foundational topics in statistics, making it particularly valuable for teaching and learning. The name CougarStats is inspired by Mount Royal University's athletics mascot, the cougar, symbolizing strength and agility, and by the app's focus on statistics. You can explore the app here: https://www.cougarstats.ca/ Since CougarStats is entirely browser-based, it eliminates the need for software installations, making it accessible across platforms without operating system constraints.
Type of Material:
Workshop and Training Material
Recommended Uses:
Homework, in-class, individual, team, and lecture: This site is suitable for use in classrooms, for homework assignments, individual learning, or group exploration in mathematics-related courses. This site would be best for individual review or investigation but could also be incorporated into a homework assignment.
Technical Requirements:
Any Browser
Identify Major Learning Goals:
The student will gain the following after using CougarStats: input raw data (or upload a file) to compute things such as mean, median, quartiles, standard deviation, skewness, etc.; generate visualizations such as boxplots, histograms, stem-and-leaf plots to see data shape and outliers; use probability-distribution tools (binomial, normal, hypergeometric, etc.) and sampling/inference modules to learn how statistical theory translates into calculation and graph; and, gain practice and confidence in moving from descriptive to inferential statistics and connecting graphs to numerical summaries.
Target Student Population:
High School, College Upper Division, Graduate School, Professional
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Basic understanding of statistics: definitions of mean, median, quartiles, standard deviation; familiarity with distributions (normal, binomial etc.), basic hypothesis testing concepts; basic understanding of regression/correlation if using those modules.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
This is an excellent statistics calculator that covers a broad range of statistical topics from descriptive statistics through inference and regression—all in one place. Accuracy appears to be solid: built-in calculations of mean, standard deviation, quartiles, skewness, etc. After the student enters in the data and tells the system what to produce, it clearly shows the results and includes the basic steps that were taken to produce the results. It also includes a sentence that interprets the results. This interface supports different inputs (manual entry, upload), which enhances flexibility for classroom or homework use.
Concerns:
For the Chi-Squared tests, it can only handle tables up to 3x3.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
This is a very efficient calculator that will work well for just about any elementary statistics class since it includes just about every topic that is covered in standard elementary statistics classes. Students can get immediate results and feedback from data input, which supports quick learning.
It is easy to write assignments: Instructors can ask students to upload specific data sets, create graphs, compute statistics, and interpret results using this tool. It is good at reinforcing concepts: For example, moving from descriptive statistics into distributions and inference helps build the scaffold of a statistics course.
Builds on prior knowledge: If students have already learned mean, median, quartile, the tool allows extensions to skewness, regression, etc.
Concerns:
None
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The layout is a very clear, simple, intuitive design requiring minimal technical skill, with an example given for each type of data that one would use. This an accessible site from any device, with instant feedback that makes learning engaging. It supports experimentation with values to promote discovery learning. The clean design allows students to manually enter or upload data into the calculator. The labels are well marked and the system uses tabs and entry choices that are very simple to navigate. Graphical outputs and statistical outputs in the same interface help make connections between numbers and visuals.
Concerns:
None
Creative Commons:
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