Treffer: Computer Simulation Exercises for Economics Statistics.

The article focuses on computer-assisted exercises in economics designed for students. A series of quantitative computer exercises were designed that includes an interactive computer routine, a detailed handout and structured homework assignments. The handout encourages students to study before going to the computer center and serves to reduce apprehension and confusion, as well as to educate students about the purpose, underlying theory, structure, and uses of the exercises. The exercises address conceptual problems at the core of the study of statistics. They are not, however, the central part of the course, and they do not, at least directly, relate to standard examination questions. The exercise program is divided into two parts. In the first, students are introduced to a third pedagogical example, a simple Bayesian weather forecasting problem. The second section allows students to create and solve their own problems or to use the program to solve problem set or textbook exercises. With the computational speed and accuracy of the computer at their disposal, students can experiment at low cost with the effects of changing the underlying prior and conditional probabilities.