A cartoon to teach the idea that the mean is affected by outliers while the median is not. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea from Dennis Pearl (The Ohio State University). Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.
A statistics scramble that might be used in teaching about the relationship between the mean and the median in a skewed distribution. A set of five anagrams must be solved to reveal the letters that provide the answer to the clue in the cartoon. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers based on an idea by Dennis Pearl. Free for use on course websites, or as an in-class, or out-of class exercise.
A set of twenty statistics anagrams that might be used for an end of semester terminology review. This collection of anagrams appeared in the article "Even More Fun Learning Stats" by Lawrence M. Lesser in issue #49 (2007) of "Stats" magazine (pp.5-8,19, 27).
Who says a statistics teacher can't play a `mean` guitar ... with X-barre chords? Quote by University of Texas at El Paso professor of Mathematical Sciences, Lawrence Mark Lesser (1964-)
This Haiku was written by Dr. Nyaradzo Mvududu of the Seattle Pacific University School of Education. The poem took first place in the 2007 A-Mu-sing competition.
Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease. A quote by Canadian physician and medical educator Sir William Osler (1859 - 1919). The quote appears in William Osler: Aphorisms from his bedside teachings and writings, (Henry Schuman; 1950, page 104).
I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live. A quote by American Supreme Court Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856 - 1951) as quoted in "Brandeis: A Free Man's Life" by Alpheus Thomas Mason Viking Press, 1946; page 145). The quote also appears in "Statistically Speaking: A dictionary of quotations" compiled by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither.
This website provides a comprehensive overview of descriptive statistics (mean/median/mode, range, standard deviation, and variance) through informative webpages with examples, links to data sets, and problems for the readers to try for themselves.
A song for use in helping students to reason about mean and median and the effect of an outlier. Lyrics & Music © 2016 Amy Adler. This song is part of an NSF-funded library of interactive songs that involved students creating responses to prompts that are then included in the lyrics (see www.causeweb.org/smiles for the interactive version of the song, a short reading covering the topic, and an assessment item).
A song lyric by Dennis Pearl of The Ohio State University written as a parody of the 1960 tune "Hit the Road Jack" by Percy Mayfield; made popular by Ray Charles in his 1961 recording. What to say in class before song: There are times when the mode may be preferred to the mean - especially if the concept of interest is tied to understanding the most likely situation. You might remember that Ray Charles used to sing a song about this... In a class where Bayesian and Maximum Likelihood methodology has been introduced you might add the following after the first sentence "For example when you assume a uniform non-informative prior for a parameter, then the m.l.e. coincides with the mode of the posterior distribution - and the mean of the posterior distribution may not be a good estimate." Tip for Teaching: The song takes up a bit too much class time for delivering its message. Thus, for in-class use, it is recommended to play only the first verse or three. Musical accompaniment realization and male vocals are by Joshua Lintz, female vocals are by Mariana Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.