New subject: Happy Groundhog Day! What happened in your introductory statistics class today?

2 Feb 2015

Happy Groundhog Day!

I continue to find it inexplicable that neither private colleges nor 
public universities see fit to cancel classes out of respect for this 
august occasion.  But this year I've decided to try to make the best of 
this lamentable oversight, and I need your help!

I think it might be fun to ask introductory statistics teachers to 
compare notes on what's happening in their classes on one particular 
day.  What better day than Groundhog Day for revisiting the same 
question over and over, and over and over, and over and over, from 
multiple perspectives?

I'm writing this after Groundhog Day has officially begun in 
Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, but it's shortly after 9pm on Super Bowl 
Sunday here in California.  So, to get the ball rolling on this 
whimsical idea (I strongly prefer the word "whimsical" to "silly" in 
this context), I'll use future tense to anticipate what will happen in 
my class on Monday.  I plan to be sound asleep when Punxsutawney Phil 
makes his celebrated prognostication.  (Too much information: Thirty 
years ago I did indeed make the trek to Gobbler's Knob with my future 
bride before sunrise on February 2, but I won't be up so early or 
anywhere near Punxsutawney this year!)

My introductory students and I in STAT 217-09 at Cal Poly will begin the 
fifth week of our ten week term on February 2 by finishing up a 
discussion of principles of well-designed experiments.We’ll discuss a 
study conducted at Harvard about whether students spend $50 differently 
depending on whether they’re told that it’s a “tuition rebate” or “bonus 
income.”Then we’ll consider one of the first studies of the drug AZT for 
reducing mother-to-child transmission of HIV.We’ll culminate this 
discussion by collecting some in-class data on a very simple randomized 
experiment investigating whether grouping of letters can affect memory. 
All students will receive the same 30 letters in the same order, but 
some will find convenient, recognizable three-letter groupings and 
others will see more irregular groupings of letters.

Then I expect to have time to introduce a study about whether swimming 
with dolphins is beneficial to patients who suffer from clinical 
depression.  We'll discuss the design of the study and do a quick 
exploration of the 2x2 table of results, setting the stage for 
simulating a randomization test to assess whether the difference between 
success proportions in two treatment groups is statistically 
significant.  Carrying out this simulation in class, using cards and 
then an applet, will have to wait until February 3 when the excitement 
of the momentous day has passed. (Or who knows, perhaps my students and 
I will find when we awake on Tuesday that we are destined to magically 
relive Monday again and again...)

Please indulge me in this fanciful exercise by replying to this 
Simulation-Based Inference listserv with a description of what happened, 
or will happen, in your introductory statistics class on Groundhog Day 
2015.  Maybe we statistics teachers will learn something interesting by 
exchanging this information and reflecting on the variety of 
responses.Even if not, we can honor the grand tradition of Groundhog Day 
by engaging in a substantially less grand but only marginally more silly 
(oops, I mean whimsical) one.

With best wishes for the special day and for an early spring (to those 
of you who must endure winter),

Allan Rossman

-- 
Allan J. Rossman
Professor and Chair
Statistics Department
Cal Poly
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
arossman(a)calpoly.edu
http://statweb.calpoly.edu/arossman/