Lightweight Statistics App

Software	ECMAscript, or object oriented web interface building language like PHP
Covers	Web interface development, algorithmic programming, statistics.
Skills Required	Programming, ideally some interest in probability and statistics
Challenge	Conceptual ?? Technical ?? Programming ???

Brief Description

There are lots of situations where people need some statistical calculations done, but don't want to do elaborate calculations themselves (or have forgotten how in the years since they took a stats course), or can't or don't want to fire up a powerful professional tool like SPSS.

Your challenge is to develop a web-based program for doing relatively straightforward statistics, that people can go and find when they need it. This could rely on interactions with the server or it could run entirely in JavaScript (these days, ECMAscript) within the browser. The latter approach would provide an opportunity for getting good at writing ECMAscript and building interactive web interfaces.

The system would need to be able to collect datasets from the user and enable the user to edit the datasets to correct errors and explore hypothetical situations. The system ought to be able to write simple text files containing datasets and results. In an ideal world the system would be able to read text files containing datasets, perhaps using JSON or an appropriate XML language.

Extensions

The system should be extended incrementally to include more statistical calculations. It could include some checks on the appropriateness of the calculations, that could display warnings or additional results.

The system could include a set of questions for the users about their data and the results they want, to test the applicability of a particular method - this is something the users ought to be allowed to skip if they want to. A Statistical Advisor would be a rather different project.

Variants

An alternative to a web-based program is a smartphone app running under Android or iOS.

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