Resource Library

A series of 19 songs used to teach Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) by Alan Reifman of Texas Tech University. A video of an in-class performance of the musical on April 27, 2007, is also available at the website. The Musical took second place in the 2007 A-Mu-sing competition.

This interactive lecture activity motivates the need for sampling. "Why sample, why not just take a census?" Under time pressure, students count the number of times the letter F appears in a paragraph. The activity demonstrates that a census, even when it is easy to take, may not give accurate information. Under the time pressure measurement errors are more frequently made in the census rather than in a small sample.

A cartoon to teach about the measurement issues of bias, reliability, and validity. Cartoon 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.

This module is designed to illustrate the effects of selection bias on the observed relationship between premarital cohabitation and later divorce. It also serves as a review of key methodological concepts introduced in the first part of the course.

This collection of datasets comes from several phases of drug research. Each dataset comes with a full description and questions to answer from the data.

A statistician's wife had twins. He was delighted. He rang the minister who was also delighted. "Bring them to church on Sunday and we'll baptize them," said the minister. "No," replied the statistician. "Baptize one. We'll keep the other as a control." This is joke number 30 on Gary Ramseyer's First Internet Gallery of Statistics Jokes at http://www.ilstu.edu/~gcramsey/Gallery.html

... statistics - whatever their mathematical sophistication and elegance - cannot make bad variables into good ones. Quoted from "Analysis of Nominal Data" by H.T. Reynolds (Sage, 1984) p. 8

This is a three day lesson plan. The first day is an introduction to concepts in probability. The second day is an application of probability in the field of genetics. The third day is a time for students to expand their understanding of probability and genetics via short research project. The site includes resources, advice, and notes to the teacher. Probability topics include: law of large numbers, simple and compound events, sample size, sample space, and more.

This article discusses teaching causality without being discipline specific. It explains the causal differences between description, prediction and explanation.

This paper presents rules for determining whether an index variable in such a table is part or whole depending on whether the associated margin value is an average, a sum or a 100% sum. Tables with missing margin values -- date-indexed tables, half tables and control tables -- are analyzed. Recommendations are made to improve reader understanding of any table involving rates or percentages.