[CITASA] suggestions for PC-related intro

[Barry Wellman]

1. James Davis (Dartmouth, then Harvard) used to teach an intro course
based on analyzing survey data. This was 20-35 years ago, using mainframes
and primitive command-line software. I once replicated it with a small
intro class of 30 and it went well. Should go better with SPSS
point-click, as long as you stick to freqs & xtabs: graphs & tables. I
think Jim did a book on this, but I forget the name (:

2. We give a Many Eyes assignment in my 3rd year course. Many Eyes is an
IBM Visual Labs (name?) contribution that hangs up a lot of data sets, and
some tools for visualizing and analyzing it.

Whatever you do, I hope you have TA backup, as this always takes a lot of
hand-holding. But it is gratifying when they "get it".

 Barry Wellman
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