Statistics is taught in many academic disciplines. It can be taught in a theoretical way (as with courses in mathematical statistics) and it can be taught in an applied way (as happens in most other courses). Quite what is meant by applied varies from course to course not only in the area of applications (psychological examples may not be as attractive to geography students as they are to psychology students) but also in what is meant by applied. When the author of this report first learnt statistics examples often amounted to little more than calculations with a few numbers. Sometimes the numbers were even embellished with fictional background ("Factory A produces..."). Real examples became more common over the years though they were often overused - the iris dataset being a prime example. Thanks to the internet there are now many more opportunities for finding interesting up-to-date understandable examples with real data. The purpose of the workshop was to discuss this new resource in terms of some basic questions:
