This package was developed to give an exaustive introduction of the main
concepts of statistics, probability theory and error analysis: we have
also payed special attention to errors in simulations.
Students are often not able to understand the meaning of error analysis
in a simulation environment: they are inclined to neglect the errors,
being misled by the idea that a computer is a perfect machine and
behaves in a "deterministic" way.
The philosophy, as with the previous package about diffusion, is not to
abandon students in front of a computer, but on the contrary to exploit
its capacity and that of the Web, using them as very useful tools for
educational activities.
To understand the impact of the hypercourse, we are testing our packages with students of the first year of Medical Chemistry of Bologna University.
We are also working on other chapters of the physics course, and hope to provide two new didactical software packages about mechanics and thermodynamics.
We would like to thank Maria Cecilia Coperchio for her help in building Java applets, Riccardo Veraldi for some help in programming, and Ivan Nanni at the Department of Statistics of Bologna University for his suggestions on the topic.
