Non-symbolic math

  • This poem, written in July 2024 by Lawrence M. Lesser of The University of Texas at El Paso, is in the form of a bimodal distribution, reflected in the poem’s real-world context.  Before showing the poem, a teacher could first ask students to reflect on what they would expect a histogram of ages of pedestrians killed (or severely injured) to have and why (chances are some of their suggested rationale will  be captured in the poem!).

    Afterwards, students wanting to examine or discuss real-world evidence of such a distribution may look for data on their own, or be shown section 1.1.3 of 

    Roe, M., Shin, H., Ukkusuri, S., Blatt, A., Majka, K. et al. (2010), “The New York City Pedestrian Safety Study and Action Plan Technical Supplement,” New York City Department of Transportation. http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc_ped_safety_study_action_plan_technical_supplement.pdf . 

    This visual poem may also inspire students to write their own short statistics poem using (and connecting to) a data set with a differently shaped distribution.

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  • A song by Lawrence M Lesser written in 2022 to emphasize the idea that measures of variation like the standard deviation or IQR do not change with a shift in location.  May be sung to the tune of "Vacation", the 1982 hit by the all-female rock band, the Go-Go's.  The audio for this parody was produced by Nicolas Acedo Aguilar and the vocalist was Alexandria Campos, students in the commercial music program at The University of Texas at El Paso.

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  • A joke to use in talking about how simulation might aid in learning statistical inference.  The joke was written in April 2018 by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University with editorial help from Larry Lesser from University of Texas at El Paso.

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  • A pun to familiarize students with Anscombe's Quartet - the group of 4 data sets with the same means, standard deviations, correlations, and regression lines for X and Y that were produced by British statistician Frank Anscombe in a 1973 paper in the American Statistician. The joke was written in 2016 by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. This joke should be used in a written form since students will not "get" the joke if they have never heard of Anscombe's Quartet - the value for teaching coming from having them look it up. Alternatively, it can be used in an oral presentation following an activity on this topic.

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  • What is correct, what is incorrect, and why?
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  • A joke for use in discussing measures of central tendency. The joke was written by Jackie Bryce Miller, University of Michigan and won third place in the 2015 A-Mu-Sing competition.
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  • A statistical analysis, properly conducted, is a delicate dissection of uncertainties, a surgery of suppositions. is a quote from Statistician Michael J. Moroney (1940 - ). The quote appears in his 1951 book "Facts from Figures".
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  • This is a song suitable for middle school level statistics in reinforcing key elements of the scientific method. College-level use might include playing before a lecture to lighten the mood while setting up. The song's lyrics and music were composed by Jeff Hall audio file is a performance by the scientific jam band (see www.scientificjam.com/scijam2.htm)
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  • Indeed, the laws of chance are just as necessary as the causal laws themselves. is a quote of quantum physicist David J. Bohm (1917- 1992). The quote appears on page 23 of his 1957 book "Causality and Chance in Modern Physics". The quote also appears in "Statistically Speaking: A dictionary of quotations" compiled by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither.
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  • Everyone believes in the normal law, the experimenters because they imagine that it is a mathematical theorem, and the mathematicians because they think it is an experimental fact. is a quote by French physicist Jonas Ferdinand Gabriel Lippmann (1945-1921). The quote may used in a class discussion of the assumption of normality. It can be found in Henri Poincare's 1896 book "Calcul de Probabilities" (in French).
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