Resource Library

A quote to initiate a discussion about critiquing statistical issues in public policy statements seen in the media. The quote is from American writer and public policy researcher Kathleen Geier (1963 - ) and may be found in her article "On the importance of statistical literacy," in Washington Monthly May 12, 2012.

A quote to motivate discussions of the importance of statistics for critical thinking. The quote is by Deborah J. Rumsey (1961 - ), The Ohio State University. The quote appears in Chapter 1 page 10 of her book, Statistics For Dummies 2nd edition, 2011

This site has the data and shows the code you would use to replicate the examples in Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence, by Judith D. Singer and John B. Willett. It has code in SAS, R, Stata, SPSS, HLM, MLwiN, and Mplus.

"Chingola Tankhouse" is a poem by Scottish poet Eveline Pye from Glasgow Caledonin University. The poem was written about her experiences working as an Operational Research Analyst for Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines in Zambia from 1975 to 1983. The poem was originally published in 1995 in Scottish literary publication West Coast Magazine. "Chingola Tankhouse" might be used in course discussions of the importance of controlling for important factors in observational studies in order to draw important conclusions.

January 11, 2011 T&L webinar presented by Rakhee Patel(University of California - Los Angeles, UCLA) and hosted by Jackie Miller (The Ohio State University). Since formal hypothesis testing and inference methods can be a challenging topic for students to tackle, introducing informal inference early in a course is a useful way of helping students understand the concept of a null distribution and how to make decisions about whether to reject it. We will present two computer labs, both using Fathom, that illustrate these concepts using permutation in a setting where students will be answering interesting investigative questions with real data.

...the most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making is a quote by English author Douglas Noel Adams (1952-2001) that can be used in teaching the importance of understanding the assumptions being made that underlie statistical inference. The quote is from the 1990 book "Last Chance to See" that was co-written with Mark Carwardine. It is part of a passage that Adams wrote about his experience watching a silverback gorilla in Zaire and trying to imagine what the animal was thinking about him.

A cartoon for use in discussions about how to critique quantitative evidence presented in the media. The cartoon is the work of Theresa McCracken and appears as #7203 on McHumor.com Free for non-profit use in statistics course such as in lectures and course websites.

A cartoon that might be used in discussing excessive interim analyses. The cartoon is #24 in the "Life in Research" series at www.vadio.com. Free to use with attribution in the classroom or on course websites.

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".

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.)