What is CAST?
CAST stands for Computer-Assisted Statistics Textbooks and consists of a collection of electronic textbooks (e-books). Three e-books cover material in introductory statistical methods courses with data and scenarios from different application areas. Other e-books teach more advanced topics.
- Dynamic graphics explain difficult concepts -- most pages have animations, simulations or other dynamic displays
- CAST is highly interactive to help keep interest and improve learning
- The approach is data-focused with many data sets
Using CAST in a web browser
CAST was originally designed to run within a web browser but needed to use small embedded Java programs (called applets) for its dynamic and interactive diagrams. They used a Java plugin that all browers once supported but browsers are gradually dropping support for Java.
You may find that the applets work in your current browser (a check is made when an e-book is opened) but you will eventually have to change to a different version of CAST.
(However if you want to try CAST in your browser, click the 'e-books' tab at the top of the page to see the list of e-books and start one.)
Stand-alone version of CAST
We strongly recommend that you download CAST and use the stand-alone version in the future.
Since the dynamic and interactive diagrams in the browser-based version of CAST will eventually stop working, we encourage users to download CAST and run the stand-alone version from a local hard disk or file server. This will allow you to use CAST well into the future. The Download tab at the top of this page describes how to download and install CAST.
Licence and copyright 
CAST can be used without charge under a Creative Commons Licence. This allows users to freely download, copy and use CAST provided it is fully attributed to the author. However the complete CAST package must not be modified and no parts of CAST may used independently of it.
Full copyright is retained by the author, Doug Stirling.
There is more detailed information about the licence and copyright in the Preface of individual CAST e-books.
Acknowledgements 
Many people and organisations have contributed to the development of CAST.
- Massey University
- CAST was written by Doug Stirling, while employed at Massey University in
Palmerston North, New Zealand. Massey University has given considerable support
both directly through grants from its Fund for Innovation and Excellence
in Teaching and indirectly with encouragement at all levels. CAST could
not have existed without Massey's support.
- Individuals
- Many colleagues at Massey University have helped with ideas and feedback about CAST. In particular, I would like to thank Greg Arnold, Howard Edwards,
Jeff Hunter, Graham Wood, Geoff Jones and Alasdair Noble for their contributions
to CAST and its predecessors.
- Outside Massey, David Griffiths
(University of Wollongong, Australia) and Larry Weldon (Simon Fraser University,
Canada) had considerable influence on the approach to teaching statistics in CAST through discussions about an introductory statistics textbook that we jointly wrote. More recently, Roger Stern (University
of Reading, UK) has contributed many suggestions for improvements and has been a source of contacts for ongoing funding.
- Other organisations
- The International Rice Research Institute provided early funding for development of a customised CAST e-book
with biological examples that later became the Biometric e-book in CAST.
- The Rockefeller Foundation contributed towards development of the two African CAST e-books that were originally targeted at agriculture students in sub-Saharan Africa and Parin Kurji at the University of Nairobi helped with their content.
- Both the UK Met Office and the UK Department for International Development helped to fund a series of e-books for use in courses run by the University of Reading to teach basic statistics to climatologists in Africa.
- The CAST material about design of industrial experiments was developed with
funding from Nestlé. Ahmed Bousbaine from Nestlé Research Centre
helped considerably with the approach and level of that material.
- The World Food Programme funded development of the first chapter of the Official
Statistics e-book about Data Presentation.
About the author 
CAST was written by Doug Stirling, a Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Fundamental
Sciences at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Doug was born in Scotland and earned qualifications in statistics and computer science in the 1970s (Honours BSc in statistics, postgraduate diploma in applied statistics and MSc in computer science). He was later awarded a PhD in computational statistics.
After a short period working at Queen Mary College in the University of London, he emigrated to New Zealand in 1981 and has been on the academic staff at Massey University
since then, teaching a wide range of statistics (and occasionally computer science) courses.
Doug has done research on various topics, in particular contingency tables,
statistical algorithms and the use of software to teach statistical concepts.