A joke to help in a discussion of how a well designed experiment helps to reduce the variance of the response variable. The Joke was written by Larry Lesser (The University of Texas at El Paso) and Dennis Pearl (Penn State University) in Februrary 2021.
Note - when the joke is spoken there is no need to say the parenthetical part - simply pronounce the word "variants" to sound like "variance".
A poem to help in discussing matched-pair designs. UTEP Professor Larry Lesser wrote this poem on February 1, 2021, using end-rhyme couplets to convey (literally and figuratively) tradeoffs of a design with matched pairs. Note that the rhymes are not always perfect, a reflection of how it can be impossible to match subjects perfectly. Also note how the would-be final couplet is ruined by losing its second line, just as you effectively lose two subjects when one subject in a pair chooses to drop out of your study.
A poem written in 2019 by Sabrina Little, a middle school student at the Mackintosh Academy in Boulder, CO. She entered it into the American Mathematical Society’s Math Poetry Contest contest for Colorado middle school, high school, and undergraduate students in connection with the 2020 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Denver. Sabina’s poem was judged the winner in the category for middle school students. The poem uses imagery which can enhance a lesson on line of fit and outliers. Sabrina Little read her poem at the 2020 Joint Mathematics Meetings (see 2:42 mark of the video posted at http://www.ams.org/programs/students/math-poetry).
A cartoon that can used to help discuss the difference between large and small datasets and the kinds of issues involved in analyzing them and the questions that can be answered with them. The cartoon was used in the April 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Eric Vance from the University of Colorado Boulder. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.
A cartoon that can be used to motivate the importance of statistics in making decisions. The cartoon was used in the January 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Douglas VanDerwerken, an instructor at the United States Naval Academy. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.
A cartoon that can be used to motivate the importance of statistics in gleaning understanding from the large amounts of data in the modern world. The cartoon was used in the November 2019 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Shawn Orton, an instructor at the Waterford School. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.
A cartoon that links well with the famous Isaac Newton apple tree fable and can be used for discussing the importance of data to speed innovation in any discipline from science to business to public policy. The cartoon was used in the October 2019 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Eric Vance from University of Colorado Boulder. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.
A cartoon that can be used for discussing data wrangling issues involved with bringing together data of varying file formats, naming conventions, and columns and transforming it into one cohesive data set. The cartoon was used in the September 2019 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Larry Lesser from University of Texas at El Paso. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.
A cartoon that can be used for discussions that compare and contrast survey samples versus a census. The cartoon was used in the August 2019 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Jim Alloway from EMSQ Associates. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.
A song providing an overview of Introductory Statistics with lyrics written by Michael Posner of Villanova University who also performs the song on the accompanying MP3 audio file. The song is a parody of the 2010 hit "Cooler Than Me" by Mike Posner. The song is also the sound track on the corresponding video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rKQtDb4VjU The video and song were the grand prize winner of the CAUSE 2013 A-Mu-sing competition. Free for use in nonprofit education applications.