Resource Library

In comparing the deaths of one hospital with those of another, any statistics are justly considered absolutely valueless which do not give the ages, the sexes and the diseases of all the cases. is a quote by British nursing pioneer and statistician Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910). The quote appears on page 59 of her 1859 book "Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not".

This applet is designed to allow users to explore the relationship between histograms and the most typical summary statistics. The user can choose from several types of histograms (uniform, normal, symmetric, skewed, etc.), or can create their own by manipulating the bars of the histogram. The statistics available for display are mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation, and interquartile range. Also available is a "Practice Guessing" option, in which the values of the statistics are hidden until the user has entered guesses for each value.

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cock-sure of many things that were not so. is a quote of American Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841 - 1935). The quote is found in an article written by Justice Holmes in 1918 for the "Harvard Law Review" v. 32, page 40. The quote is also found in the book "Statistically Speaking, a Dictionary of Quotations" by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither.

Brandon Vaughn from the University of Texas: Some students in statistics classes exhibit behaviors that share characteristics with the established construct of learned helplessness. This webinar will discuss this phenomenon, and detail an instrument recently developed which measures this (HILS: Helplessness in Learning Statistics).

Statistics educators are keenly aware of the value of using real data to help students see the relevance and applicability of statistics. The federal statistical agencies have invested in significant efforts to make data accessible and available. In this webinar, Ron Wasserstein will point you to these resources, discussing their uses and limitations.

I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk. includes the quote attributed to Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann (1903 - 1957). The full quote was relayed by Enrico Fermi in 1953 when he was asked about the value of a result that used four free parameters in fitting experimental results. (see "A meeting with Enrico Fermi" "Nature" 427: p. 297.)

It is a common error to infer that things which are consecutive in the order of time have necessarily the relation of cause and effect. is a quote by American botanist and medical educator Jacob Bigelow (1787 - 1879). The quote appears on page 41 of his 1859 book "Nature in Disease: illustrated in various discourses and essays".

A three slide animation dealing with the multiple testing issue of getting false positives when a large number of tests are conducted. The cartoon animation was drawn 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 song parody by Steve Snodergren (a.k.a. Al G Bra: see www.reverbnation.com/algbra) that may be sung to the tune of "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder. Much of the song relates to concepts about summary statistics and taking a cautious approach to interpreting such summaries. This song appears on Al G Bra's "Old-Time Radical" CD.

Ellen Gundlach and Nancy Palaez (both of Purdue University) use Calibrated Peer Review, an online writing and peer evaluation program available from UCLA, to introduce statistical literacy to Nancy's freshman biology students and to bring a real-world context to statistical concepts for Ellen's introductory statistics classes in an NSF-funded project. CPR allows instructors in large classes to give their students frequent writing assignments without a heavy grading burden. Ellen and Nancy have their students read research journal articles on interesting subjects and use guiding questions to evaluate these articles for statistical content, experimental design features, and ethical concerns.