This recording of a web seminar (webinar) provides a tour of StatCrunch. StatCrunch (www.statcrunch.com) is a Web-based data analysis package. StatCrunch has all of the routines required for introductory statistics and many more. The software also offers pedagogical features such as interactive graphics. Many of these capabilities are discussed and demonstrated by StatCrunch developer Webster West.
TeachingWithData.org is portal of teaching and learning resources for infusing quantitative literacy into the social science curriculum. A Pathway of the National Science Digital Library, TwD aims to support the social science instructor at secondary and post-secondary schools by presenting user-friendly, data-driven student exercises, pedagogical literature, and much more! Resources are available on a wide range of topics and disciplines.
An important idea in statistics is that the amount of data matters. We often teach this with formulas --- the standard error of the mean, the t-statistic, etc. --- in which the sample size appears in a denominator as √n. This is fine, so far as it goes, but it often fails to connect with a student's intuition. In this presentation, I'll describe a kinesthetic learning activity --- literally a random walk --- that helps drive home to students why more data is better and why the square-root arises naturally and can be understood by simple geometry. Students remember this activity and its lesson long after they have forgotten the formulas from their statistics class.
June 22, 2010 Activity webinar presented by Paul Roback, St. Olaf College and hosted by Leigh Slauson, Capital University. This webinar describes an in-class activity, motivated by Case Study 1.1.1 in The Statistical Sleuth, in which students compose haiku poems about statistics. Their poems are used to introduce two-sample t-tests and randomization tests. In addition, the in-class experiment leads to good discussion about experimental design issues, where students compare our design to the actual experiment described in Amabile et al.(1985) "Motivation and Creativity: Effects of Motivational Orientation on Creative Writers", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48(2): 393-399. I use this activity on the first day of our second course in applied statistics (Statistical Modeling), but it could easily be used in an introductory course as well. Examples of haiku poems which have resulted from this activity can be found under CAUSEweb > Resources > Fun > Poem (direct link), or at www.causeweb.org/cwis/SPT--FullRecord.php?ResourceId=1883.
You can't fix by analysis what you bungled by design. is a quote by American education researchers Richard J. Light, Judith D. Singer, and John B. Willett. The quote is found in the preface of their 1990 book "By Design: planning research on higher education".
This 6 minute 39 second video can be used to teach the difference between correlation and causation. For example, that a relationship between X and Y might be explained by X causing Y, Y causing X, or a third factor that drives them both. The video is episode #109 (Nov 10, 2009) in the Psych Files podcast series produced and hosted by Michael A. Britt, Ph.D. at www.thepsychfiles.com. Video is free to use in the classroom or on course websites under a non-commercial ShareAlike creative commons license.
A joke to teach the meaning of "significance" written in 2011 by University of Texas at El Paso professor of Mathematical Sciences, Lawrence Mark Lesser (1964-).
There is no such thing as no chance is a quote by American businessman and founder of the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford (1863-1947). The quote is from a speech given to the 1930 class of students at Edison Laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It is referred to on page 14 of the 1930 book "American Florist".
A song lyric by Dennis Pearl of The Ohio State University written as a parody of the 1960 tune "Hit the Road Jack" by Percy Mayfield; made popular by Ray Charles in his 1961 recording. What to say in class before song: There are times when the mode may be preferred to the mean - especially if the concept of interest is tied to understanding the most likely situation. You might remember that Ray Charles used to sing a song about this... In a class where Bayesian and Maximum Likelihood methodology has been introduced you might add the following after the first sentence "For example when you assume a uniform non-informative prior for a parameter, then the m.l.e. coincides with the mode of the posterior distribution - and the mean of the posterior distribution may not be a good estimate." Tip for Teaching: The song takes up a bit too much class time for delivering its message. Thus, for in-class use, it is recommended to play only the first verse or three. Musical accompaniment realization and male vocals are by Joshua Lintz, female vocals are by Mariana Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.
This applet performs the Student's t test on two sets of data, and reports the average and variance for both sets of data, the t score, degrees of freedom, and one and two tailed P values.