Manual Computations - A Tool for Reinforcing Concepts and Techniques

One of the issues in statistics education today involves the extent to which manual computations should be incorporated into the elementary statistics curriculum. Students should be required to work with data and carry out some manual computations because such activities speed and enhance the learning process, reinforce the concepts and techniques introduced, provide an environment of constructive participation and personal discovery, and improve quantitative skills. A discussion of student populations, of the nature of hand computations, and of different types of data and their role in the learning process is given.