Resource Library

A cartoon to be used for discussing the nature of conclusions for a significance test. The cartoon was used in the November 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Andrea Boito from Penn State University, Altoona, while the drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. Two honorable mentions that rose to the top of the judging in the November competition included a repackaging of the classic refrain "If you torture data enough it will confess," written by Caleb Ohrn, a student at Akron University and "Did you check to see if the conditions were met? Ignore them at your own peril!" written by an anonymous author.

A cartoon to be used for discussing the normality assumption in statistical models. The cartoon was used in the September 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Eugenie Jackson, a student at University of Wyoming while the drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. A second winning caption was by Amy Nowacki from Cleveland Clinic/Case Western Reserve University whose entry “The dangers of driving more than 3 standard deviations below the speed limit,” would be useful in a classroom discussion of z-scores (see "Cartoon: Pile-UP II") Honorable mentions that rose to the top of the judging in the September caption contest included “Big pile-up at percentile marker -1.96 on the bell-curve. You might want to take the chi-square curve to avoid these negative values,” written by Mickey Dunlap from University of Tennessee at Martin; “Call the nonparametric team! This is not normal!” written by Semra Kilic-Bahi of Colby-Sawyer College; “I assumed the driving conditions today would be normal!” written by John Vogt of Newman University; and “CAUTION: Z- values seem smaller than they appear. Slow down & watch for stopped traffic reading these values,” written by Kevin Schirra, a student at University of Akron.

A "haiku" poem written by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. The poem is a playful vehicle to help introduce the chi-square test for contingency tables.

"Black Swan" is a poem by Scottish poet Eveline Pye from Glasgow Caledonin University. The poem was originally published in the September 2011 issue of the bimonthly magazine Significance, in an article about Eveline Pye's statistical poetry. "Black Swan" might be used in course discussions of the idea that just because an event has not been observed to date does not mean that it is impossible (see Taleb's Black Swan Theory).

A short joke that might be used in discussing the common statistical model that observations follow different normal curves under different treatments. The joke was written by Lawrence Lesser from University of Texas at El Paso in 2016.

The textbook, "Statistics: Unlocking the Power of Data," by Lock, Lock, Lock, Lock, and Lock, webpage has a collection of data sets which are used in their textbook. Even without the textbook, the variables are well named, and it is relatively easy to tell what the variables represent.

The textbook website for "Statistics: The Art & Science of Learning from Data," by Agresti, Franklin and Klingenberg, has a collection of Shiney Apps for visualizing statistical concepts. There are usable on computers, tablets and smart phones. Apps include Exploratory Analysis, Random Numbers, Association and Linear Regression, Distributions, Probabilities, Sampling distributions, Central Limit Theorem,, Inferential Methods (one and two samples), ANOVA, and Bootstrap Confidence Intervals & Permutation Tests.

The STatistics Education Web, also called STEW, is an online collection of peer-reviewed statistics lesson plans for K-12 teachers. The web site is maintained by the ASA and accessible to K-12 teachers throughout the world. Lessons cover a wide range of probability and statistics topics.

"Scaffolding" is a poem by Scottish poet Eveline Pye from Glasgow Caledonin University. The poem was originally published in the September 2011 issue of the bimonthly magazine Significance, in an article about Eveline Pye's statistical poetry. "Scaffolding" might be used in course discussions of the importance of checking assumptions in the application of statistical methods or of the value of statistical sleuthing in discovering hidden relationships.

A song about Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). The lyrics were written by Alan Reifman of Texas Tech University and may be sung to the tune of the 1982 hit "Maneater" by Daryl Hall, John Oates, and Sara Allen. Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.