Support Strategies

Our mission is to enable the Indiana University community to easily and effectively perform statistical analyses and advanced mathematical procedures. The Stat/Math Center is responsible for centrally-delivered statistical and mathematical software on systems ranging from the Student Technology Centers to the large shared High Performance Systems. This includes license administration, systems administration, and technical for a broad spectrum of users, platforms, and operating systems.

Individual consulting is available to everyone at IU -- by e-mail, by appointment, on a walk-in basis or over the telephone -- but since it is very time-consuming, we try to meet most of the needs of most of our clients in other ways.

• We provide training, in coordination with the UITS Education Program. We offer free 90 minute STEPS classes to students; the most popular of these introduce Maple, SPSS, and Matlab. They are usually taught by graduate students, in the evening or at a regular class meeting time during the second or third week of the semester. The goals of these classes are:
  • To provide some familiarity with the basic operation of the software,
  • To warn of common problems and illustrate how to recover from them, and
  • To familarize the students with the application's help system.

• Our major effort is electronic delivery over the World Wide Web of resources that enable our clients to solve their problems independently, such as:
  • a collection of locally-produced tutorials and documentation, including the materials upon which the STEPS classes are based:
    • Getting Started with Maple,
    • Getting Started with SPSS,
      . . .
  • a collection of hotlists pointing to resources produced at IU or elsewhere:
    • Information about particular software packages:
      • Maple at IU
      • SPSS at IU
      • Matlab at IU
        . . .
    • Information about particular areas:
      • Numerical Computing Resources
      • Mathematical Computing Resources
      • Statistical Computing Resources
        . . .
  • a collection of answers to frequently asked/ trivia questions, the UITS Knowledge Base:
    • In Maple and Mathematica how do I convert sin(A+B) to sinA cosB + cosA sinB, and vice versa?
    • With Netscape or Mosaic for Macintosh, how can I use Maple as a helper application?
    • In Mathematica, if I forget to load a package before I first use one of its functions, how can I recover?
    • Who can help me with statistical computing?
      . . .
    We "empower the users" by helping them to function as independent learners, while providing a robust safety net.
    • The STEPS classes reach most new users, and include the answers to the most frequently asked questions.
    • The Knowledge Base contains more advanced or specialized information, plus some very basic material.
    • The World Wide Web makes the class materials and a variety of examples available 24 hours a day.

  Extended one-on-one consulting is focused on students and faculty using software as a tool for research, and faculty using software for teaching. We try to provide as much support as possible, as efficiently as possible!