Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Introduction
18.1
Most statistical graphics on the Web are static, noninteractive and undynamic, even
though other statistical analysis systems usually provide various interactive statis-
tical graphics. Interactive and dynamic graphics, see Symanzik (
), can be im-
plemented using Internet technologies such as Java or Flash (Adobe,
). Scalable
Vector Graphics (SVG) and Extensible
D (X
D) offer alternative means of realiz-
ing an XML-based graphics format. One advantage of using XML is that data from
a wide range of research topics are easy to deal with, because they are all presented in
the XML format. Another advantage isthat XML isatext-based graphics format, i.e.,
it is scriptable, meaning that it can be generated dynamically by a statistical analysis
system or web application. Before introducing XML-based graphics, we introduce
the relationship between the Web, XML, and statistical graphics.
The Web, Statistics and Statistical Graphics
18.1.1
Although the Internet isapowerfulcommunication tool,atpresent, itscorefunction
iswebpageaccess,whichhasbroughtaboutdramaticchangestothewaythatstatistics
aremadeavailable.
In addition tothe publication of o
cial statistical data and the results of company
research, members of the general public have begun to make data available through
their own websites. Huge databases that can be accessed by anyone via the Internet
have made information available to the public. As a result, statistical databases (see
Boyens et al.,
) have been developed to store such data, and statistical analysis
methods such as data mining (see Wilhelm,
) have been developed to help the
public access such data. Moreover, new target areas in statistical analysis, such as
network intrusion detection (see Marchette,
), have been developed.
he popularization of the Web has brought about significant changes to the field
of statistical analysis and statistics education. Early in the history of the Internet in-
dividuals made textbooks and data available to the public, so sites such as StatLib,
which gathered statistical information, were important. At present, various services
and applications that use multimedia and multiplatform characteristics are available
forstatistical analysis andforstatistics education. Client-server typesystems,suchas
XploRe (MD*Tech,
) and Jasp (Project Jasp,
), are also available to the sta-
tistical analysis systems. Moreover, server-type commercial sotware, such as SPSS
and S-PLUS, is also available.
Numerousdatasets,tutorialsandanalysistoolshavebeenmadeavailableforstatis-
tics education, for example by the UCLA Department of Statistics and the Web In-
terface for Statistics Education (WISE, WISE Project (
)) program at Claremont
University.MD*Base(MD*Tech,
)andDASL(DASLProject,
)aredatabases
of case studies. he EMILeA Stat (e-stat) project (BMBF,
) and the @d project
(@d Project,
) enable analysis to be performed on the Web using statistical en-
gines. In addition, e-learning systems, such as New Statistics (University of Hagen,
),use multimedia teaching materials that include video and interactive applica-
tions.
