Resource Library

An interesting sestina poem to discuss measurement scales and can also be used while discussing spurious correlations if the teacher provides a guiding question such as “What part of the poem describes the relationship between quantitative variables, rather than just descriptions of quantitative variables? Are those relationships examples of 'Spurious Correlations' (per the title of the poem)? Explain briefly."   If the students need further help, the instructor might suggest that they focus on the second to last stanza.  The was written by Jules Nyquist, the founder of Jules' Poetry Playhouse, a place for poetry and play and published in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (2022) v. 12 #2 p.554.

A song about regression to the mean written by Dennis K Pearl from Penn State University in February 2022.  May be sung to the tune of the Scottish folk song "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.  The audio recording was produced by Nicolas Acedo with vocals by Alejandra Nunez Vargas, both students in the Commercial Music Program at The University of Texas at El Paso.

A cartoon to aid in discussing confounding and correlative versus causal relationships, for example by asking students to suggest an alternate reason for the relationship besides the one jokingly illustrated in the cartoon.  The cartoon was created by English cartoonist John Landers in December, 2021 based on an idea by Dennis Pearl (Penn State University) and Larry Lesser (The University of Texas at El Paso).

A video using dance to teach about concepts involved with correlation.  This 2013 video is from the “Dancing Statistics” series developed by Lucy Irving from Middlesex University (UK) funded by a BPS Public Engagement grant and additional funding from IdeasTap.  Full credits are within the video.   The Dancing Statistics project is described at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00050/full

The video also comes with teaching notes for viewing by instructors who are logged into CAUSEweb.org. 

A 2020 cartoon illustrating the idea of heteroscedasticity (non-constant variance) that might be used to start a discussion on the important of the constant variance of errors in making inferences from regression models.  The cartoon was used in a 2021 Teaching Statistics paper "Statistical edutainment that lines up and fits," by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University and Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso.

Regression to the Mean is a 2009 poem by Andrew Porter of Wirral, England. The poem can be used in teaching about regression to the mean and the regression fallacy. Free for use in non-profit educational settings. A video featuring the poem being read aloud is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D66I36fksZA

A quick "hands on" activity for an in-class experience of data collection as a simple linear regression example where students  predict the time needed for a human chain of hand squeezes to make a full circuit as a function of number of people in the chain.  The lesson plan  secondary school lesson plan adapted from Cynthia Lanius’ hand squeeze activity by Bo Brawner at Tarleton State University.

A pun to familiarize students with Anscombe's Quartet - the group of 4 data sets with the same means, standard deviations, correlations, and regression lines for X and Y that were produced by British statistician Frank Anscombe in a 1973 paper in the American Statistician. The joke was written in 2016 by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. This joke should be used in a written form since students will not "get" the joke if they have never heard of Anscombe's Quartet - the value for teaching coming from having them look it up. Alternatively, it can be used in an oral presentation following an activity on this topic.

A cartoon designed to support a discussion of using dummy variables to code for categories of a categorical variable in a regression model (e.g. 5 are needed when there are 6 categories). The cartoon was used in the February 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Dominic Matriccino, a student at the University of Virginia. 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 second winner in the February 2020 contest was "The grass really is greener on the homogeneity side," written by Jennifer Ann Morrow, an instructor from University of Tennessee. Jennifer's cartoon caption can be used in discussing the importance of within-group variability in judging differences between groups and the difficulty when the groups being compared have different levels of variability.

A cartoon that can be used for discussing the traditional theme of "Correlation does not imply Causation" as well as what observational evidence does provide the most convincing evidence of a causal relationship. The cartoon was used in the June 2019 CAUSE cartoon caption contest. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.