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  • A song to encourage students to use critical thinking skills in evaluating a statistic published in the media. The 2002 JSM paper (http://www.statlit.org/pdf/2002BestASA.pdf) of sociologist Joel Best and feedback from Milo Schield gave Lawrence Lesser (The University of Texas at El Paso) inspiration to explore what it means to say statistics are socially constructed. The song is a parody of the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." The lyrics were originally published in the August 2016 Amstat News. Audio of the parody was produced and sung by students in the commercial music program of The University of Texas at El Paso.

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  • A cartoon to be used in discussing the Elevator Paradox or other elevator related probability problems. The cartoon was used in the January 2017 CAUSE cartoon caption contest. The winning caption was written by Larry Lesser at The University of Texas at El Paso, while the drawing was created by British cartoonist John Landers based on an idea from Dennis Pearl.
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  • A cartoon to be used in discussing the value of stratified sampling (or blocking in experiments) with diverse populations. The cartoon was used in the January 2017 CAUSE cartoon caption contest (see "The Elevator I" for the cartoon with the winning caption). This caption is a shortened version of a caption submitted anonymously to the contest. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers based on an idea from Dennis Pearl of Penn State University.
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  • "A Given A" is a song that Lawrence Mark Lesser from The University of Texas of El Paso adapted from his poem "P(A|A)" that was originally published in the January 2017 Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. In addition to providing a vehicle for general discussion (about pitfalls of post hoc analysis, multiple comparisons, or confusing the direction of causation or conditioning), the song may spark particularly lively discussion with the second verse's reference to the Bible Code, popularized by Michael Drosnin's so-named books and discussed in 1994 and 1999 papers in Statistical Science.
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  • "Availability Heuristic" is a poem by Lawrence Mark Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. The poem was originally published in the January 2017 Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. Classroom discussion the poem may spark includes comparing and contrasting mathematical and statistical roles and language for generality, looking up and discussing the meaning of the title (a phenomenon identified by Kahneman and Tversky in 1973), exploring the"someone, somewhere" idea of Utts' Seeing Through Statistics, or discussing how many people have poor intuition with the birthday problem ("probability of at least one match in the room") because they confuse it with the birthdate ("probability at least one match with ME") problem (see letters in the summer 2014 Teaching Statistics).
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  • A quote to motivate discussions of the importance of statistics for critical thinking. The quote is by Deborah J. Rumsey (1961 - ), The Ohio State University. The quote appears in Chapter 1 page 10 of her book, Statistics For Dummies 2nd edition, 2011
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  • A quote to initiate discussions of model building By British Statistician and Epidemiologist Hilda Mary Woods (1892-1971). The quote is from her paper "The influence of external factors on the mortality from pneumonia in childhood and later adult life" in the Journal of Hygiene 1927 pages 36-43 (quote is on page 42).
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  • A quote that can be used in discussing the value and wide applicability of simulation for understanding statistical concepts and applying statistical methods. The quote is by American Statistical educator Christine Franklin (1956 - ) and is found in a 2013 interview with her conducted by Allan Rossman in the Journal of Statistics Education (volume 21, number 3).
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  • A quote that can be used in discussing how data are more convincing to people if they align with current beliefs. The quote is by American mathematician Mary Gray (1938 - ) and comes from the title of her 1993 (v. 8, page 144) Statistical Science "Can Statistics Tell Us What We Do Not Want to Hear? The Case of Complex Salary Structures." The paper, the commentaries on the paper, and Dr. Gray’s rejoinder to the commentaries include discussions of many statistical issues and is very approachable for undergraduate students.
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  • A quote to initiate a discussion of sampling and the value of randomization in avoiding bias. The quote is by economist and blogger Jaana M Goodrich (1955 - ) writing in her blog under the pseudonym Echidne of the Snakes. The quote is found at http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2005/01/exit-polls-make-my-heart-beat-faster.html
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