Java Applet

...the most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making is a quote by English author Douglas Noel Adams (1952-2001) that can be used in teaching the importance of understanding the assumptions being made that underlie statistical inference. The quote is from the 1990 book "Last Chance to See" that was co-written with Mark Carwardine. It is part of a passage that Adams wrote about his experience watching a silverback gorilla in Zaire and trying to imagine what the animal was thinking about him.

February 8, 2011 T&L webinar presented by Uri Treisman (Charles Dana Center, University of Texas at Austin) and hosted by Jackie Miller (The Ohio State University). Developmental education in America's community colleges has been a burial ground for the aspirations of our students seeking to improve their lives through education. Under the leadership for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Charles A. Dana Center, nineteen community colleges and systems are building accelerated pathways to and through developmental education with the goal of helping students with low levels of mathematical preparation complete a college credit bearing, transferable statistics course within one year. Uri will describe the work to date, the challenges the initiative faces, and the underlying ideas of improvement science that are driving its development.

I can prove anything by statistics except the truth is a quote by British politician George Canning (1770 - 1827). The quote is found on page 587 of the 1908 book "Dictionary of Thoughts" edited by Tryon Edwards. The quote may be used to illustrate the idea that statistical inference is often geared toward demonstrating what is unlikely to be true rather than proving what is true.