Resource Library

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 hands-on activity is appropriate for a lab or discussion section for an introductory statistics class, with 8 to 40 students. Each student performs a binomial experiment and computes a confidence interval for the true binomial probability. Teams of four students combine their results into one confidence interval, then the entire class combines results into one confidence interval. Results are displayed graphically on an overhead transparency, much like confidence intervals would be displayed in a meta-analysis. Results are discussed and generalized to larger issues about estimating binomial proportions/probabilities.

This article describes a dataset on the readability of booklets about cancer and the reading levels of patients with cancer. Students should be familiar with scales of measurement, data reduction, measuring center, constructing and interpreting displays, and reaching conclusions in real problems. Key Words: Ordinal data, Means, Medians, Histograms

This article presents data for examining the ability of individuals to choose numbers randomly. Three datasets of six-tuples selected by a lottery game, generated by S-Plus, and chosen by college students can be compared using descriptive statistics and goodness of fit tests to explore bias and randomness. Key Words: Boxplots; Chi-squared tests; Minimum gap; QQ plots.

This article presents a dataset containing the 1970 draft lottery information, which illustrates a nonrandom procedure. Key Words: Chi-square; Correlation; Exploratory data analysis; Graphical analysis; Randomness; Regression.

This PowerPoint lecture presentation discusses comparing the means of two dependent populations using the paired T-test and defines the concepts of this hypothesis test. The original presentation is available for downloading.

This PowerPoint presentation evaluates type I errors in civil trials compared to criminal trials as well as provides an example of a hypothesis test and its components. The original presenation is available for download.

An important objective in hiring is to ensure diversity in the workforce. The race or gender of individuals hired by an organization should reflect the race or gender of the applicant pool. If certain groups are under-represented or over-represented among the employees, then there may be a case for discrimination in hiring. On the other hand, there may be a number of random factors unrelated to discrimination, such as the timing of the interview or competition from other employers, that might cause one group to be over-represented or under-represented. In this exercise, we ask students to investigate the role of randomness in hiring, and to consider how this might be used to help substantiate or refute charges of discrimination. Key words: Probability distribution, binomial distribution, computer simulation, decision rules

This module is a short quiz which gives a review/assessment of the main concepts for this refresher course. At the bottom, there is a grading button to rate the understanding of the material.

This tutorial on Random Variables helps students understand the definition of random variables, recognize and use discrete random variables, recognize and use continuous random variables, and solve exercise problems using random variables.