Resource Library

The Student Dust Counter is an instrument aboard the NASA New Horizons mission to Pluto, launched in 2006. As it travels to Pluto and beyond, SDC will provide information on the dust that strikes the spacecraft during its 14-year journey across the solar system. These observations will advance our understanding of the origin and evolution of our own solar system, as well as help scientists study planet formation in dust disks around other stars.

In this lesson, students explore the SDC data interface to establish any trends in the dust distribution in the solar system. Students record the number of dust particles, "hits," recorded by the instrument and the average mass of the particles in a given region.

The song may be used to teach the importance of a good graphical display in presenting statistical data. May be sung to the tune of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" (Eddie Schwartz, Pat Benatar, 1980). An earlier version appeared in Spring 2011 issue of Teaching Statistics. Lyrics by Lawrence Lesser, University of Texas at El Paso. version here introduced at the 2013 U.S. Conference On Teaching Statistics.

A joke that can be used when teaching six sigma process control ideas or chi-squared goodness-of-fit tests. The joke was written in 2013.

Although numbers don't lie, it's rather annoying that they don't tell us everything we need to know. Maybe it's because 99% of all statistics only tell us 49% of the story. is a quote by American investment author Ron DeLegge II (1971 - ). The quote appears in his book "Gents With No Cents" published in 2011 by Half Full Publishing Group.

A song for teaching about the Cramer Rao Lower Bound for the variance of an unbiased estimate. The lyrics were written by Kyle White and Bradley Turnbull from North Carolina State University as a parody of the 2003 track "Jerk It Out" by the Swedish band "Caesars". The song won first prize in the song category in the 2013 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition and is performed by "The Fifth Moment", an NCSU graduate student band (Kristin Linn, Jason Osborne, Siddharth Roy, Bradley Turnbull, Joseph Usset, and Kyle White). Free for use in non-profit education settings.

A song for teaching concepts of estimating a population mean and addressing uncertainty in the estimate. The lyrics were written by Lawrence Mark Lesser from University of Texas at El Paso as a parody of the 2011 song "Call Me Maybe" written by Carly Rae Jepsen, Tavish Crowe, and Josh Ramsay). The lyrics were awarded second prize in the 2013 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition. Free for non-profit educational use. Musical accompaniment realization are by Joshua Lintz and vocals are by Mariana Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.

This activity focuses on basic ideas of linear regression. It covers creating scatterplots from data, describing the association between two variables, and correlation as a measure of linear association. After this activity students will have the knowledge to create output that yields R-square, the slope and intercept, as well as their interpretations. This activity also covers some of the basics about residual analysis and the fit of the linear regression model in certain settings. The corresponding data set for this activity, 'BAC data', can be found at the following web address: http://www.causeweb.org/repository/ACT/BAC.txt

This activity explains the important features of a distribution: shape, center, spread, and unusual features. It also covers how to determine the difference between mean and median, and their respective measures of spread, as well as when to apply them to a particular distribution. Graphical displays such as: histograms and boxplots are also introduced in this activity. The corresponding data set for this activity is found at the following web address: http://www.causeweb.org/repository/ACT/food.txt

Song addresses the value of a scientific poll. May be sung to the tune of the Rolling Stones' hit "It's Only Rock 'N Roll (But I Like It)" by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Musical accompaniment realizationare by Joshua Lintz and vocals are by Mariana Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.

That was why statistics had to be invented - because people were so unstable and irrational, taken one at a time. A quote of American science fiction author Raymond F. Jones (1915 - 1994) found in his 1956 short story "The Non-Statistical Man". The quote also appears in "Statistically Speaking: A dictionary of quotations" compiled by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither.