ExplainStats for Teachers: Statistics in Google Sheets

Why teachers use it

Nothing to install on school computers. ExplainStats is a Google Sheets add-on: it works in the browser, on Chromebooks, at home and in the lab, with the Google account students already have.
The same output tables as the classic Analysis ToolPak, so your existing slides, exercises and textbook screenshots still make sense.
Explanations under every result: what the p-value means, how big the effect is, which groups differ, with a cautious wording ("the data are not enough to conclude", never "there is no difference").
Show the steps: one tick rebuilds the whole calculation as live Google Sheets formulas (AVERAGE, STDEV.S, T.DIST.2T…), each with a one-sentence explanation. Students see where the number comes from, and the formulas update when the data change.
Four languages: the sidebar, the tables and the explanations switch between English, French, Spanish and Portuguese with one click. Useful for international classes.

Exercise generator: one dataset per student

Choose a test (t-test, paired t-test, one-way ANOVA, correlation and regression, chi-square), the number of students (up to 60), the number of values per group and the size of the effect hidden in the data. ExplainStats creates one sheet with a different dataset for every student, and a second sheet with the answer key: statistic, degrees of freedom, p-value, effect size and the conclusion, computed with the same engine your students will use.

The same seed recreates the same exercise, so you can regenerate the key months later. Copying answers between students is pointless: every dataset is different.

Exam mode: what it does, honestly

Exam mode hides the explanations, the which-test Assistant, the steps and the report text in the spreadsheet where you turn it on, and in every copy of that spreadsheet. It is protected by a PIN that is never stored (only a fingerprint of it), and after five wrong PINs the spreadsheet refuses new attempts for fifteen minutes.

What it does not do: lock the data. A student who copies the values into a new spreadsheet gets the explanations back. Use exam mode as you would a calculator policy, inside a supervised exam, together with your usual rules. We prefer to tell you this now rather than let you find out during a test.

Accuracy you can show your department

Every test is checked against reference implementations (SciPy, statsmodels and R) by more than 1,400 automated verifications: the tests report the confidence interval of the difference, the named variant of Cohen's d (pooled, average or d_z for paired data, like JASP) and, for 2 × 2 tables, Yates' continuity correction, like SPSS and R. The details are on the Methods & accuracy page.

What it costs

Students: the classic tools are free with no time limit. Every Pro feature (Assistant, steps, report paragraph, non-parametric tests…) is free for everyone until January 31, 2027. After that date, the free plan keeps 5 Pro analyses per month.
Teachers: the exercise generator and exam mode are Pro features, free until January 31, 2027 too. For later, we are preparing a class licence (one teacher + the students of one class, one price per semester) and an institution licence (every account of your school's e-mail domain). Prices are not final: tell us what would work for your course and we will adapt.

Ask about a class licence

Getting your class started in five minutes

Install ExplainStats from the Google Workspace Marketplace (one click). Each student installs it on their own account, or your Google Workspace administrator installs it for the whole domain.
Open a spreadsheet, then Extensions › ExplainStats › Insert sample data: ready-made datasets with a step-by-step guide under the data.
Try the which-test Assistant on the sample data: it checks normality, outliers and variances, picks the test and explains why. This is usually the moment students understand what "assumptions" are for.
Generate an exercise set for your class and keep the answer key.