A cartoon that can be used to discuss the importance of investigating and understanding the outliers in data sets. The cartoon was used in the January 2023 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Amelia Williams, a student at University of Toronto. 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 help start a class conversation about the importance of avoiding the removal of outliers without appropriate cause. The cartoon was used in the October 2021 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Erik Svenneby a student at 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 to initiate a discussion about cleaning data. The cartoon was created by American cartoonist Jon Carter.
A cartoon to facilitate discussion of designing a useful data dashboard. The cartoon was drawn by American cartoonist Jon Carter in 2014.
A cartoon to aid in discussion of fog computin, which involves connections of citizen devices to connect to a cloud computing structure. The cartoon was drawn by American cartoonist Jon Carter in 2013.
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 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 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 suitable for a course website that makes use of a boxplot to display an outlier and also uses the term "statistically significant" in its punch line. The cartoon is number 539 (February, 2009) from the webcomic series at xkcd.com created by Randall Munroe. Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites under a creative commons attribution-non-commercial 2.5 license.
A cartoon suitable for a course website or classroom use in teaching about sample surveys (election polls). The cartoon is number 500 (November, 2008) from the webcomic series at xkcd.com created by Randall Munroe. Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites under a creative commons attribution-non-commercial 2.5 license.