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Using R in an introductory stats course for non-stat/math majors using Lock5 text

8 messages · Christopher David Desjardins, Manuel Spínola, Randall Pruim +1 more

#
Hi,

I teach an introductory statistics course for non-stat/math majors that are
primarily coming from the social sciences or business. I am using the Lock
textbook, http://www.lock5stat.com/, and their software StatKey,
http://www.lock5stat.com/StatKey/. I really like the way that StatKey does
randomization tests and bootstrapping, however, I don't like that it's not
possible to perform theory-based tests on their website (e.g., if I wanted
my students to perform an independent samples t-test not by hand or run a
simple linear regression).

Ideally what I was hoping for was to use R in my introductory classes but
to have some way to make it less intimidating. I want my students to be
able to run descriptives and create basic graphics (including dot plots),
randomization tests, bootstrapping, and run t-tests, chi-square, ANOVA, and
regression.

I tried using RStudio, but it is still overkill for what I want my students
to be able to do. They don't need an IDE. Randall Pruim has kindly made a
PDF for using R with Lock5, but that is too much for what I want my
students need. Programming isn't a principal outcome of my course.

I have looked in JASP and jamovi as well, but they don't fit my needs.

The closest thing I have found to what I'm looking for is Rcmdr, but it
freezes on my Mac periodically regardless of if I use it from the Terminal,
the R GUI, or RStudio. Has anyone else encountered that issue? Rcmdr is
great because it's GUI driven but also pastes the R code, which is nice for
the more advanced students in the class.

What I am wondering is.

1. Is anyone using R with Lock5 and how do you use R to do it?
2. Does anyone know of a Shiny app that does what StatKey does AND includes
some options for descriptives and inference similar to Rcmdr? I am
basically looking for a Shiny StatCrunch.

I have thought about creating a Shiny app to do all of this, but if someone
already has a wonderful solution, I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I
created something very, very basic[1] for my students just to explore the
Lock5 data and I just might need to expand on it to get what I want.

Thanks for reading my long winded email,
Chris

[1]: https://cddesja.shinyapps.io/lock5explorer/
#
Dear Chris,

How about Radiant?

Manuel

El mar., 3 dic. 2019 a las 7:53, Christopher David Desjardins (<
cddesjardins at gmail.com>) escribi?:

  
    
#
Dear Manuel,
Thanks for the reply. Radiant looks quite interesting, but is a bit too
complex for what I'm looking for. I fear my students would get lost in the
interface. Additionally, as far as I can tell, it doesn't do bootstrapping
or randomization tests.
Best,
Chris
On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 9:26 AM Manuel Sp?nola <mspinola10 at gmail.com> wrote:

            

  
  
#
Chris,

The Lock5withR package includes all the data sets (first edition at this point) with more traditional R encoding than the package provided by the authors.

Soon (I hope ? it?s just pending a final review and polish), there will also be a companion volume as a bookdown document using R, mosaic, and ggformula to recreate all the examples.  An older version is available as a PDF here:

http://www.lock5stat.com/other/Lock5withR.pdf


For "StatCrunch in shiny", perhaps you can say a bit more about what you are looking for and how jamovi and JASP fall short.

I hope you find a solutions that works well for you.

?rjp
On Dec 3, 2019, at 9:25 AM, Manuel Sp?nola <mspinola10 at gmail.com<mailto:mspinola10 at gmail.com>> wrote:
Dear Chris,

How about Radiant?

Manuel

El mar., 3 dic. 2019 a las 7:53, Christopher David Desjardins (<
cddesjardins at gmail.com<mailto:cddesjardins at gmail.com>>) escribi?:

Hi,

I teach an introductory statistics course for non-stat/math majors that are
primarily coming from the social sciences or business. I am using the Lock
textbook, https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.lock5stat.com_&d=DwIFaQ&c=4rZ6NPIETe-LE5i2KBR4rw&r=S6U-baLhvGcJ7iUQX_KZ6K2om1TTOeUI_-mjRpTrm00&m=rvRMe6UbaU3kDRIQHpLP_3zbje0eW1UBt3Fp6o9KSec&s=qnNW5anVawrMQVNo45I1_4M8Tw3ljsmBYw4qusBVUxs&e= , and their software StatKey,
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.lock5stat.com_StatKey_&d=DwIFaQ&c=4rZ6NPIETe-LE5i2KBR4rw&r=S6U-baLhvGcJ7iUQX_KZ6K2om1TTOeUI_-mjRpTrm00&m=rvRMe6UbaU3kDRIQHpLP_3zbje0eW1UBt3Fp6o9KSec&s=N3nV9BtqXRK3zJlRPrEQoqs1wssIPU_MFhAB46Kgf8E&e= . I really like the way that StatKey does
randomization tests and bootstrapping, however, I don't like that it's not
possible to perform theory-based tests on their website (e.g., if I wanted
my students to perform an independent samples t-test not by hand or run a
simple linear regression).

Ideally what I was hoping for was to use R in my introductory classes but
to have some way to make it less intimidating. I want my students to be
able to run descriptives and create basic graphics (including dot plots),
randomization tests, bootstrapping, and run t-tests, chi-square, ANOVA, and
regression.

I tried using RStudio, but it is still overkill for what I want my students
to be able to do. They don't need an IDE. Randall Pruim has kindly made a
PDF for using R with Lock5, but that is too much for what I want my
students need. Programming isn't a principal outcome of my course.

I have looked in JASP and jamovi as well, but they don't fit my needs.

The closest thing I have found to what I'm looking for is Rcmdr, but it
freezes on my Mac periodically regardless of if I use it from the Terminal,
the R GUI, or RStudio. Has anyone else encountered that issue? Rcmdr is
great because it's GUI driven but also pastes the R code, which is nice for
the more advanced students in the class.

What I am wondering is.

1. Is anyone using R with Lock5 and how do you use R to do it?
2. Does anyone know of a Shiny app that does what StatKey does AND includes
some options for descriptives and inference similar to Rcmdr? I am
basically looking for a Shiny StatCrunch.

I have thought about creating a Shiny app to do all of this, but if someone
already has a wonderful solution, I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I
created something very, very basic[1] for my students just to explore the
Lock5 data and I just might need to expand on it to get what I want.

Thanks for reading my long winded email,
Chris

[1]: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__cddesja.shinyapps.io_lock5explorer_&d=DwIFaQ&c=4rZ6NPIETe-LE5i2KBR4rw&r=S6U-baLhvGcJ7iUQX_KZ6K2om1TTOeUI_-mjRpTrm00&m=rvRMe6UbaU3kDRIQHpLP_3zbje0eW1UBt3Fp6o9KSec&s=ngdgop1Zp6IG6qxQPENeSz7lk7jGaKc413s_nBuJ7C4&e=


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--
*Manuel Sp?nola, Ph.D.*
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COSTA RICA
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#
Hi Randall,

Thanks for the email.

I was indeed quite happy to see your PDF on the Lock website when I began
teaching the course. The last time I looked at your PDF, it it looked like
it was mostly code to do replicate their examples in R, which while
helpful, isn't quite what I'm looking for. I'd love for them to learn R in
that manner, but I think it's slightly beyond their skill set.

Ideally here's what I'd like.

I would have the StatKey interface for bootstrapping and randomization
tests written in Shiny (or a similar toolkit with R as the backend) such
that there is a main plot that shows the bootstrap or randomization
distributions (with an option to set the seed) and two side plots to show
the original sample and the current bootstrap/randomization sample. If
possible, I'd like the "current" sample plot to be updated based on the
statistic that is hovered over in the main plot (probably this could be
done with ggplot2 and an additional package or d3.js). As far as I can tell
nothing like this exists for R or Shiny (I'd love to be wrong, though). So,
basically a one-to-one port of StatKey to R.

It would be great to see this functionality packaged in a Shiny app under a
tab called "Inference via Simulation". Another tab might be called
"Theory-based Inference" (or some better name), that provided a drop down
menu to select a test (binomial, t-test, regression, ANOVA, chi-square), an
option to calculate an arbitrary CI, a plot of the data for assumption
checking, model output printed, and a plot showing the p-value all within
that tab. This could be broken up to make it a little less busy. Finally
there might be another tab for just "Exploring the Data" both numerically
or graphically (essentially a tab for EDA). Additionally, there might be
the option to show/hide the R code. I would like students to be able to
upload the data as a CSV to the app.

I've got quite a bit of experience making Shiny apps, but don't want to
create one if someone has already made something similar to this that I
could either fork or just use.

Regarding JASP and jamovi, I found their language to be weird and creating
confidence intervals cumbersome. E.g., creating a confidence interval for a
mean, as far as I could tell, requires running a one sample t-test, making
sure H_0 the Test Value(?) is set to 0 otherwise the CI won't make sense,
clicking location parameter, and then setting the confidence interval and
hoping the students don't select effect size instead, which they do. In
JASP, you can't edit data directly but must edit it in Excel. and you can
edit directly in Rcmdr. JASP's focus on Bayesian is also confusing for my
non-Bayesian course as students select the wrong tests very easily. I do
love that they have the ability to export to LaTeX tables by default, very
nice. Also, in JASP you can't get dot plots, which I think are very helpful
for teaching. Neither software is capable of bootstrapping and
randomization tests as far as I know.

Chris
On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 9:53 AM Randall Pruim <rpruim at calvin.edu> wrote:

            

  
  
#
Also, I am not wedded to a GUI, I'd be happy to just use R but I want to
make sure the code doesn't get interfere with learning the methods and
concepts, which I think at their level is more important.

Chris

On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 12:07 PM Christopher David Desjardins <
cddesjardins at gmail.com> wrote:

            

  
  
#
Some folks at Penn State have developed a bunch of shiny apps for intro stats.

https://shinyapps.science.psu.edu/

They are not Lock5 specific, but there might be some you can use.
BOAST | Book Of Apps for Statistics Teaching<https://shinyapps.science.psu.edu/>
The apps in this collection are the work of undergraduate students majoring in Statistics at Penn State University. These students took part in the BOAST program in 2017, 2018, and 2019. (BOAST = Book Of Apps for Statistics Teaching).
shinyapps.science.psu.edu

Michael
__________________________________________________________
Michael Granaas                                           mgranaas at usd.edu<mailto:mgranaas at usd.edu>
Department of Psychology                           SL: VRprofessor Resident
University of South Dakota
414 E. Clark St                                             Phone: 605 658-3700
Vermillion, SD  57069                                 FAX: 605 658-3355
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#
Hi Michael,
Thanks for sharing that. It looks like a really nice collection of Shiny
apps.
Chris

On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 12:37 PM Granaas, Michael <Michael.Granaas at usd.edu>
wrote: