INTERACTIVE VISUALIZATIONS OF STATISTICAL RELATIONSHIPS: WHAT DO WE GAIN?

This paper describes a project that involves statistical researchers and software designers in a collaboration designed to accelerate progress in research on statistical thinking and the development of effective software tools for statistical education; the two tools in question are TinkerPlots and Fathom. Most of the paper is devoted to a description of teachers analyzing a dataset first without, then with technology and to a discussion of the implications of such observations for both research and software development.