Resource Library

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. is a famous quote of English historian Sir John Dalberg-Acton (1834 - 1902). Of course, Lord Acton was not referring to statistical hypothesis testing when he made the remark in an April 1887 letter to Mandell Creighton. However, the widespread knowledge of the quote by students makes it an interesting way to cover the idea that statistical significance is not the same as practical significance.

In the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches. This is a quote by French physiologist Claude Bernard (1813 - 1878). The quote is from his 1865 book "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine" as translated by Henry Greene (the first printing of this english translation was in 1927 by Macmillan).

A song parody by Steve Sodergren (a.k.a. Al G Bra: see www.reverbnation.com/algbra) that may be sung to the tune of "With or Without You" by U2. Can be used to stimulate conversation about confidence intervals and the typical use of 95% confidence in the media when it is not otherwise reported (i.e. being within plus or minus two standard deviations for intervals based on a normal sampling distribution). This song appears on Al G Bra's "Hotel Califormula" CD.

Hypotheses like professors, when they are seen not to work any longer in the laboratory, should disappear. This is a quote by British chemist and chemistry education pioneer Henry Edward Armstrong (1848 - 1937). The quote is found in Sir Harold Hartley's chapter on Armstrong in his 1971 book "Studies in the History of Chemistry".

Webinar presented by Roger Woodard of North Carolina State University and Ginger Rowell of Middle Tennessee State University and hosted by Jackie Miller of The Ohio State University on June 13, 2006. Many people would like to use online resources in their classrooms. However, the typical online applet does not have supporting materials that allow the teacher to introduce them into the classroom. Instructors that simply point students to a website without specific instructions and planning may find that the students do not achieve the desired learning outcomes from using the applet. In this webinar Dr. Woodard presented a basic framework that instructors can use to plan and implement the use of online materials in the classroom. These are illustrated with examples that have been field tested in courses at NCSU and at MTSU.

Webinar recorded May 9, 2006 presented by Carl Lee of Central Michigan University and hosted by Jackie Miller of The Ohio State University. Do you use hands-on activities in your class? Would you be interested in using data collected by students from different classes at different institutions? Would you be interested in sharing your students' data with others? Does it take more time than you would like to spend in your class for hands-on activities? Do you have to enter the hands-on activity data yourself after the class period? If your answer to any of the above questions is "YES", then, this Real-Time Online Database approach should be beneficial to your class. In this presentation, Dr. Lee (1) introduces the real-time online database (stat.cst.cmich.edu/statact) funded by a NSF/CCL grant, (2) demonstrates how to use the real-time database to teach introductory statistics using two of the real-time activities and (3) shares with you some of the assessment activities including activity work sheets and projects.

The International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP) puts out a newsletter bimonthly. According to ISLP, "The mission of the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP) is to support, create and participate in statistical literacy activities and promotion around the world." This newsletter is a way to get information out to those interested.

This in-class demonstration combines real world data collection with the use of the applet to enhance the understanding of sampling distribution. Students will work in groups to determine the average date of their 30 coins. In turn, they will report their mean to the instructor, who will record these. The instructor can then create a histogram based on their sample means and explain that they have created a sampling distribution. Afterwards, the applet can be used to demonstrate properties of the sampling distribution. The idea here is that students will remember what they physically did to create the histogram and, therefore, have a better understanding of sampling distributions.

This visualization activity combines student data collection with the use of an applet to enhance the understanding of the distributions of slope and intercept in simple linear regression models. The applet simulates a linear regression plot and the corresponding intercept and slope histograms. The program allows the user to change settings such as slope, standard deviation, sample size, and more. Students will then see theoretical distributions of the slope and intercept and how they compare to the histograms generated by the simulated linear regression lines.

This activity begins with an instructor demonstration followed by a student out-of-class assignment. Students will observe their instructor create a scatterplot and observe how the correlation coefficient changes when outlier points are added. Students are then given a follow up assignment, which guides them through the applet. In addition, the assignment provides insight about outliers and their effect on correlation. This activity will show exactly how outliers numerically change the correlation coefficient value and to what degree.