A cartoon that might be used in introducing scatterplots and correlation. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea from Dennis Pearl (The Ohio State University). Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.
Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity. is a quote by ancient Greek philosopher Democritus (460 B.C.E. - 360 B.C.E.).
The errors which arise from the absence of facts are far more numerous and more durable than those which result from unsound reasoning respecting true data. is a quote by English Mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871). The quote is found on page 119 of his book "On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures" (1832)
I think the essential thing if you want to be a good statistician, as opposed to being a mathematician, is to talk to people and find out what they're doing and why they're doing it. is a quote from Florence Nightingale David (1909 - 1993). The quote appears at the end of an interview published in "Statistical Science" in 1989 (p. 235-246) in response to a question from Nan Laird asking for advice for practicing statisticians.
This joke can be used to motivate class discussions on the assumptions underlying drawing conclusions from data (especially the assumption of stationarity). The joke is a revision of a story in "The Angel's Dictionary: A modern tribute to Ambrose Bierce" by Edmund Volkart - also quoted in "Statistically Speaking: A dictionary of Quotations" by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither (page 62). The revision (to make the story suitable for classroom use) was written by Dennis Pearl, The Ohio State University.
A cartoon to teach about confidence intervals. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea from Dennis Pearl (The Ohio State University) in 2008. Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.
This activity uses student's own data to introduce bivariate relationship using hand size to predict height. Students enter their data through a real-time online database. Data from different classes are stored and accumulated in the database. This real-time database approach speeds up the data gathering process and shifts the data entry and cleansing from instructor to engaging students in the process of data production.