Resource Library

This page explores Benford's law and the Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule). Benford's law may also have a wider meaning if the digits it evaluates are considered ranks or places. The digit's probability of occurring could be considered the relative share of total winnings for each place (1st through 9th). In other words, 1st place would win 30.1%, 2nd place 17.6%, 3rd 12.5%,... 9th place 4.6% of the available rewards. The normalized Benford curve could be used as a model for ranked data such as the wealth of individuals in a country. To determine if the Benford model gives results similar to those of the Pareto principle we use the normalized Benford equation in a computer program.

This excerpt from Engineering Statistics Handbook gives a definition for and examples of outliers. A sub-page also discusses Grubbs' Test for Outliers

This lesson describes bootstrapping in the context of a statistics class for psychology students.

As described in the web page itself: "This document was prepared as an illustration of the use of both t tests and correlation/regression analysis in drawing conclusions from data in an actual study." The study compares athletic performance of swimmers that are optimists vs. pessimists.

This correlation and regression example compares performance on reading comprehension questions to performace on the SAT. It also compares those who read the passage referred to by the questions to those who did not. Exercise questions and answers are also provided.

Residual plots and other diagnostics are important to deciding whether or not linear regression is appropriate for a set of data. Many students might believe that if the correlation coefficient is strong enough, these diagnostic checks are not important. The data set included in this activity was created to lure students into a situation that looks on the surface to be appropriate for the use of linear regression but is instead based (loosely) on a quadratic function. Key words: regression, residuals

This page contains information and links about statistical literacy. Some links are to textbooks, online articles, resources, and information about upcoming events.

This page discusses disadvantages of large datasets with regard to Simpson's Paradox.

This page has data sets used by UCLA statistics classes. The html files in the second column contain descriptions of a particular data set and a link to the data at the end of the file. There are also .dat and .dta files that contain just data, with no description.

This page is a collection of examples, demonstrations, and exercises that can be used to motivate a lecture, demonstrate an important point, or create a laboratory exercise for students. Topics include the following: Descriptives, Normal Distribution, Sampling Distributions, Probability, Chi-Square, t tests, Power, Correlation/Regression, One-way Anova, Multiple Comparisons, Factorial Anova, Repeated Measures, Multiple Regression, General Linear Model, Log Linear Models, and Distribution-Free Tests.