Resource Library

A sketch by Anastasia Mandel reinterpreting Woman Holding a Balance by Johannes Vermeer (1662-63) with the statistical caption "Sample balancing: "A false balance is abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is his delight.", Proverbs, 11:1" This is part of a collection of sketches by Anastasia Mandel and their accompanying statistical captions discussed in the paper "How art helps to understand statistics" (Model Assisted Statistics and Applications, 2009) by Stan Lipovetsky and Igor Mandel in volume 4 pages 313-324. Free to use in classrooms and on course websites.

April 27, 2010 Activity webinar presented by Shonda Kuiper, Grinnell College, and hosted by Leigh Slauson, Capital University. Educational games have had varied success in the past. However, what it means to incorporate games into the classroom has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. The goals of these games are to 1) foster a sense of engagement, 2) have a low threat of failure, 3) allow instructors to create simplified models of the world around us, and 4) motivate students to learn. This webinar uses the same reaction time game to demonstrate a simple 1- 2 day activity that is appropriate for introductory courses as well as an advanced project that encourages students to experience data analysis as it is actually practiced in multiple disciplines. In the introductory activity students are asked to spend 15 minutes playing an on-line game. Data collected from the game is used to demonstrate the importance of proper data collection and appropriate statistical analysis. The advanced project asks students to read primary literature, plan and carry out game based experiments, and present their results.

In this video (which lasts a little over 21 minutes), Oxford mathematician Peter Donnelly reveals the common mistakes humans make in interpreting statistics -- and the devastating impact these errors can have on the outcome of criminal trials.

Amidst the strange vicissitudes of life, 'tis likely, most unlikely things should happen is a quote by Greek poet Agathon (448-400 BC). The quote is mentioned in Aristotle's (384 - 322 BC) book "Rhetoric". This version of the quote is found on page 357 of the 1823 "A New Translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric" by John Gillies.

I'd Like to Teach the World to Think is a parody of the 1971 hit single "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (in perfect harmony)" by the New Seekers. The music for the song was also made famous in a series of Coca-Cola advertisements that have run for decades. The parody may be used in teaching the value of collecting data, especially to improve reliability and the need to assume the null hypothesis is true in carrying out a significance test. Lyrics by Dennis Pearl (The Ohio State University) with assistance from Lawrence Mark Lesser (University of Texas at El Paso). Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.

Descriptions, examples, and online calculators for a variety of statistical concepts. Includes One-Way Anova, Tukey's Post Hoc Test, and much, much more.

Probability plotter and calculator allows students to explore different distributions and their relationships. Interactive dialogue box allows students to change distribution shape and scaling parameters as well as allowing to explore cumulative probabilities. Discrete distributions include the discrete uniform, binomial, and the poisson. Continuous distributions include the uniform, beta, exponential, weibull, gamma, and lognormal distributions. Sampling distributions include the normal, the t-distribution, the chi-square, and the F-distribution.

Luck is the residue of design is a quote by American baseball executive Branch Rickey. The quote appeared in the February 21, 1946 issue of the "Sporting News". The quote is also often attributed to 17th century English poet John Milton - but that source has not been confirmed.

A webpage in which links are provided to histograms of sample statistics (mean, median, standard deviation, maximum etc.) as a function of sample size. Each time the REFRESH button is clicked a new set of 2000 samples is generated.

The two worksheets enable instructors to demonstrate how changes in the magnitude of the treatment effects and of the standard deviation of the error term will impact significance in a One-Way ANOVA model. The user specifies three input values that influence the simulation of random observations. ANOVA calculations are provided for the student, leaving the focus on the interpretation of the results. The mirror site (found at http://misnt.indstate.edu/cmclaren/ANOVA_Note.doc) contains an article that can serve as a teaching note to accompany the worksheets.