Resource Library

This page provides a table for selecting an appropriate statistical method based on type of data and what information is desired from the data. It also compares parametric and nonparametric tests, one-sided and two-sided p-values, paired and unpaired tests, Fisher's test and the Chi-square test, and regression and correlation. It comes from Chapter 37 of the textbook, "Intuitive Biostatistics".

This lesson poses a series of questions designed to challenge students' possible misconceptions of statistical inference and hypothesis testing. The lesson uses the statistical software, Fathom, and three datasets with information on the number of chips per canister distributed by a snack maker. The data can found at the relation address below.

This applet allows students to explore three methods for measuring "goodness of fit" of a linear model. Users can manipulate both the data and the regression line to see changes in the square error, the absolute error, and the shortest distance from the data point to the regression line.

This textbook for medical statistics covers many topics such as: Data display and summary; Mean and standard deviation; Populations and samples; Statements of probability and confidence intervals; Differences between means: type I and type II errors and power; Differences between percentages and paired alternatives; The t tests; The chi-squared tests; Exact probabilty test; Rank score tests; Correlation and regression; Survival analysis; Study design and choosing a statistical test.

This collection of datasets, posted by UCLA, is divided into 6 groups: Datasets for Teaching; Data from Books; Data from Consulting Projects; Data from National Statistics Agencies; Social Science Data Archives; Data from US Governmental Agencies. The data from books come from the following authors: Petruccelli, Nandram and Chen; Freedman, Pisani, and Purves; Andrews and Herzberg; Carlson and Thorn; Cox and Snell; Hand, Daly, Lunn, McConway and Ostrowski; and Moore.

This site contains links to journals on probability and statistics published around the world. "Some publishers require registration to browse abstracts. Others require a current subscription to the journal by you or your institution. Most browsable titles, abstracts and papers are only for the past year or so."

This applet was designed to illustrate the impact on simple linear regression output caused by adding a new data point. The applet simulates data and provides a graphical display of the data points and fitted regression line as well as the updated regression line after the addition of a data point.

This site presents may articles on current events and issues that challenge statistics reported in the news. Each article encourages readers to think critically about statistics reported by the media and to look at the whole picture before believing conclusions presented in the news. "Our goals are to correct scientific misinformation in the media resulting from bad science, politics, or a simple lack of information or knowledge."

The individual source of the statistics may easily be the weakest link. Harold Cox tells a story of his life as a young man in India. He quoted some statistics to a Judge, an Englishman, and a very good fellow. His friend said, Cox, when you are a bit older, you will not quote Indian statistics with that assurance. The Government are very keen on amassing statistics ... they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that every one of these figures comes in the first place from the `chowty dar` [village watchman], who just puts down what he damn pleases." Quoted from "Some Economic Factors in Modern Life" (King and Son, 1929; p. 258) by Sir Josiah Charles Stamp (1880 - 1941), British economist, statistician, director of the Bank of England and president of the Royal Statistical Society.

What do you call a tea party with more than 30 people? A Z party! This is joke #123 on http://www.ilstu.edu/~gcramsey/Gallery.html Gary Ramseyer's First Internet Gallery of Statistics Jokes and is attributed by the gallery to Stacey Ecott.