Interactive 'Shiny' Apps for Building Statistical Intuition

Provides interactive 'Shiny' applications for building intuition in statistics and data science. The apps run locally and use visualization, simulation, and repeated sampling to illustrate topics such as probability distributions, permutation tests, analysis of variance, linear regression, and sums of squares.

statsapps

The statsapps R package features interactive Shiny apps to help you learn concepts from data science & statistics.

The apps run locally and use visualization, simulation, and repeated sampling to illustrate topics such as probability distributions, permutation tests, analysis of variance, linear regression, and sums of squares.

For more see the statsapps package website.

Installation

Install the current release from CRAN:

install.packages("statsapps")

To get a bug fix or to use a feature from the development version, you can instead install the development version of statsapps from this GitHub repo with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("vbaliga/statsapps")

Available apps

run_distributions_app()
run_sums_squares_app()
run_anova_app()
run_linear_reg_app()
run_permutation_app()
run_power_precision_app()

The apps open in your default web browser. Set launch.browser = FALSE to disable this behavior.

Example

All apps can be started via functions from statsapps. Each app can be started using a function that begins with run_. For example, use run_permutation_app() to start the Shiny app for the Permutation Test. This will open a new window in your default web browser with the Shiny app.

library(statsapps)
run_permutation_app()

The example we showcase here is the Permutation Test app, demonstrates how repeated random reassignment of observations can be used to build a null distribution for a two-sample permutation test. As with all statsapps, this app is interactive and allows you to see the results of individual permutations, and how the result of each permutation incrementally builds the null distribution.

There are several tabs within the main window of the app. The first two tabs provide an explanation and the original data. The third tab shows the results of performing permutations. The buttons in the left sidebar allow you to perform permutations and visualize the outcome of the most recent permutation.

Permutation test app showing how random reassignment of observations builds a null distribution.

Contributing and/or raising Issues

Feedback on bugs, improvements, and/or feature requests are all welcome. Please see the Issues section on GitHub to make a bug fix request or feature request.

Citation

To cite statsapps in publications, use:

citation("statsapps")
#> To cite package 'statsapps' in publications use:
#> 
#>   Baliga VB (2026). _statsapps: Interactive 'Shiny' Apps for Building
#>   Statistical Intuition_. R package version 0.2.0,
#>   <https://github.com/vbaliga/statsapps>.
#> 
#> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#> 
#>   @Manual{,
#>     title = {statsapps: Interactive 'Shiny' Apps for Building Statistical Intuition},
#>     author = {Vikram B. Baliga},
#>     year = {2026},
#>     note = {R package version 0.2.0},
#>     url = {https://github.com/vbaliga/statsapps},
#>   }

The CRAN package DOI is 10.32614/CRAN.package.statsapps.