This cartoon was created by Martha Pienkowski, an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, and won an honorable mention in the 2019 A-mu-sing Contest. The cartoon reviews a comparison about the assumptions and use among various hypothesis test methods. The cartoon compares the z-test, the t-test, and nonparametric alternatives like the sign test and the Wilcoxon test in paired and unpaired situations.
This poem was written by undergraduate students Gill Marjorie Onate and Muzaffar Bhatti from University of Toronto Mississauga, and was given an honorable mention in the poetry category of the 2019 A-mu-sing competition. The poem is designed to aid discussions about when a nonparametric test might be used instead of a normal theory test and the difference between paired and unpaired data.
This cartoon was created by Austin Boyd from University of Tennessee and took first place in the cartoon category of the 2019 A-mu-sing Contest. The cartoon provides a humorous way to facilitate conversation about the multiple comparisons caveat (that the chance of getting at least one significant result grows with the number of things being tested) and the large sample caveat (that it is more likely to see small p-values with smaller effect sizes when you have a larger sample size).
A poem reflecting on Type I errors and the use of the null hypothesis in testing by Micah Wascher, a high school student at North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. The poem won an honorable mention in the 2025 A-mu-sing Contest.
Lyrics by John Bailer from Miami University about the value of successful statistical modeling that won an honorable mention in the 2025 A-mu-sing Contest. The song is a parody of the 1972 hit song by Johnny Nash "I Can see Clearly Now" and the vocals on the audio were performed by Kent Peterson from Oxford Presbyterian Church in Miami Ohio. In using the song for teaching, John suggests that each verse could be connected to a question or two. Here are examples:
Verse 1: How does an effective visualization reveal pattern? What types of patterns might emerge? How might such patterns be captured in a model?
Verse 2: What are ways variables are 'engineered' as part of an analysis?
Verse 3: How does the introduction of a confounder in a model potentially impact the estimated coefficients of other variables in a model?
Verse 4: AUC* is one way the predictive quality of a model is described. What are other features of a useful model?
* AUC stands for Area Under the Curve for the Receiver Operator Characteristic
Bridge: Residuals following a normal distribution are expected for some types of models. What other distributions might be expected? What else might be learned from the residuals?
Verse 5: Why are we more confident with interpolations than extrapolations?
A satirical song about data science written by Dick De Veaux from Williams College that received an honorable mention in the 2025 A-mu-sing Contest. The song lampoons arguments over control of the field of data science and its defining characteristics.
"P-value's More than Alpha" is a music video by David Yew, an undergraduate student at Singapore Management University, that reviews introductory normal theory testing. The music is a fun parody of Billy Joel's 1989 hit song "We Didn't Start the Fire" and took second place in the 2025 A-mu-sing Contest. David also credits his statistics instructor, Rosie Ching, for providing feedback.
A cartoon to use in explaining how hypothesis testing typically includes a null hypothesis that nothing is going on except random chance and p-values are calculated under that assumption. The cartoon was created by Joy Reeves from the Rachel Carson Council of Duke University and took first place in the cartoon/joke category of the 2025 A-mu-sing competition.
Statistic Acrostic is a poem by statistics educator Lawrence Mark Lesser and biostatistician Dennis K. Pearl that covers several statistical concepts using only 26 words (one starting with each letter of the alphabet). It was written in 2008 as a response to an example and challenge from JoAnne Growney in her poem “ABC, an Analytic Geometry Poem” in a 2006 article in Journal of Online Mathematics and Its Applications. To expand the usefulness of this form for educational objectives, a teacher could have students not follow the 26-letter alphabet, but generate an acrostic from a statistics word or phrase.
A song to teach about when the mean versus the median is better for describing a distribution. The lyric was authored by Lawrence Mark Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. The song may be sung to the tune of Taylor Swift's Grammy-winning 2010 hit "Mean". Free for use in non-commercial teaching.