A song parody to be sung about one's favorite statistics course. The lyrics won an honorable mention in the song category of the 2011 CAUSE A-Mu-sing contest and were written by Robert Carver of Stonehill College. The song may be sung to the tune of George and Ira Gershwin's 1937 classic "They Can't Take That Away from Me." Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.
A cartoon for use in discussing the issues of causation versus correlation and the assumptions underlying Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) for students who have been introduced to that technique. The idea for the cartoon came from David Lane of Rice University and the cartoon was drawn by Ben Shabad, a student at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. The cartoon was awarded a tie for first place in the cartoon category of the 2011 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition. For for use in statistics courses at non-profit institutions.
This is an extensive collection (and a continuously expanding collection) of applets on topics that include probability, descriptive statistics, sampling distributions, Monte Carlo simulation, Buffon's coin problem, chi-square, p-values, correlation, and more. There is even a random number generator that is part of the collection.
This simulation allows you to roll two dice and compare empirical and probability histograms for the sum or product of the two outcomes.
A song lyric by Dennis Pearl of The Ohio State University written as a parody of the 1960 tune "Hit the Road Jack" by Percy Mayfield; made popular by Ray Charles in his 1961 recording. What to say in class before song: There are times when the mode may be preferred to the mean - especially if the concept of interest is tied to understanding the most likely situation. You might remember that Ray Charles used to sing a song about this... In a class where Bayesian and Maximum Likelihood methodology has been introduced you might add the following after the first sentence "For example when you assume a uniform non-informative prior for a parameter, then the m.l.e. coincides with the mode of the posterior distribution - and the mean of the posterior distribution may not be a good estimate." Tip for Teaching: The song takes up a bit too much class time for delivering its message. Thus, for in-class use, it is recommended to play only the first verse or three. Musical accompaniment realization and male vocals are by Joshua Lintz, female vocals are by Mariana Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.
TeachingWithData.org is portal of teaching and learning resources for infusing quantitative literacy into the social science curriculum. A Pathway of the National Science Digital Library, TwD aims to support the social science instructor at secondary and post-secondary schools by presenting user-friendly, data-driven student exercises, pedagogical literature, and much more! Resources are available on a wide range of topics and disciplines.
You can't fix by analysis what you bungled by design. is a quote by American education researchers Richard J. Light, Judith D. Singer, and John B. Willett. The quote is found in the preface of their 1990 book "By Design: planning research on higher education".
There is no such thing as no chance is a quote by American businessman and founder of the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford (1863-1947). The quote is from a speech given to the 1930 class of students at Edison Laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It is referred to on page 14 of the 1930 book "American Florist".
A joke to teach the meaning of "significance" written in 2011 by University of Texas at El Paso professor of Mathematical Sciences, Lawrence Mark Lesser (1964-).
This hour long radio podcast focuses on stochasticity, or randomness. According the website: "Stochasticity (a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness), may be at the very foundation of our lives. To understand how big a role it plays, we look at chance and patterns in sports, lottery tickets, and even the cells in our own body. Along the way, we talk to a woman suddenly consumed by a frenzied gambling addiction, meet two friends whose meeting seems to defy pure chance, and take a close look at some very noisy bacteria." Several guests appear in this radio podcast, including Deborah Nolan.