On the State of Computing in Statistics Education: Tools for Learning and for Doing

Abstract

This paper lays out the current landscape of tools used in statistics education. In particular, it considers graphing calculators, spreadsheets, applets and microworlds, standalone educational software, statistical programming tools, tools for reproducible research and bespoke tools. The strengths and weaknesses of the tools are considered, particularly in the context of McNamara (2016)'s list of attributes for a statistical computing tool. Best practices for computing in introductory statistics are suggested.