Wolfram|Alpha widgets for an online course

I've blogged about using Wolfram|Alpha (W|A) widgets for general use. Since I teach an online intro stats course every year, I thought it be handy to embed the widgets right in the topics section within the course management system. W|A widgets can fetch some data distributions - it's a lot easier to insert these types things at point of use rather than to send students to web sites all over the Internet. Also, I do not have to type extra instructions so that students can obtain the proper data. Here is the one I plan to use for some health statistics. ( I noticed that the units on the plot for height and weight seem to be inconsistent with the text - puzzled by that one, since W|A is usually pretty accurate.)

Wolfram Alpha Widgets

You can now customize your Wolfram Alpha (W|A) queries using a W|A widget right on your web site. It's currently in the Beta stage. You'll see a widget,which I cooked up in a few minutes, below this post. I was able to control the output to just what I wanted. I did not need all sorts of complex number representations and other stuff that comes with the standard W|A query for a simple derivative. Also, with the widget, you don't leave the web site you're on. I plan to put some of these on my class web pages.


Here's another one.