The recommended computer package for this course is DataDesk (Student Version), which comes bundled with ActivStats.  ActivStats will help you in downloading (or "importing" to use DataDesk's term) data into the system.  But here are some general steps for getting data from the course web pages to DataDesk.

a) go to the data page

b) Choose "Save As" and save the file to your hard drive.  Save as a "text" file.

c) Open the file with a word processor or text editor (for example, Microsoft Word, or Apple's SimpleText).  Choose "Save As" again and save the file as "Text only with line breaks" or "Mac" file or "IBM" file.  The reason for this is that the data file that you get from the Web is a unix file, and DataDesk can't read this.  By opening the file in Word on your own computer and choosing  to save as "text only with line breaks", you convert it to a Mac or PC type file.  Alternately, some text editors on the Mac, such as Alpha, have an option to save the file as a "mac", "ibm", or "unix" file.  DataDesk will require that it be either mac or ibm, whichever is appropriate for your computer.  This may take some playing around to figure out exaclty works. I can't tell you because it depends on your computer, operating system, and software.

d) Open DataDesk and choose "Import" from the "File" menu.  Select the file you just saved, and follow the directions.
e) Sometimes the first row of a file will contain the variable names for that data set.  DataDesk shows you the first row of the file.  If you see variable names, select "Use These Variable Names".  Otherwise, you will want to name them yourself, so select the appropriate option.  DataDesk will now show you the first few entries, one variable at a time, and ask for a name.

If you don't have a home computer...
We have ActivStats and DataDesk in the Statistics Undergraduate Computing Lab.  However, at press time the lab was not yet ready for prime time.  This means I can't promise that it will be terribly accessible to you.  You have another option, and that is to use another software package called ARC.  ARC is installed on the labs in Young Hall, in the Science Learning Center.  When you enrolled in this class, you automatically got an account in that lab, too.  Your login name is your first initial and your last name, and your password is your Bruin ID.   (If someone else has the same login name as you, then they might have changed it -- so ask them for help if you can't log on.)  I am not going to give instructions about ARC, but you're welcome to read some of the handouts I gave when I previously taught this class using ARC:

Getting Started on ARC  You can ignore the homework questions, and just use the information to help you get started.
General Hints.   These might be useful from time to time.

Finally, if you DO have a home computer, you might want to download ARC anyways.  (It's a very nice package, and best of all its FREE.  The disadvantage is that it hasn't implemented some tools that we'll need in 110B.  But it should get you through 110A.)