Resource Library

A cartoon to be used for discussing how outliers can have an influential effect on statistics. The cartoon was used in the June 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Albert Koenig, a student at Belgrade High School. The drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. Other ideas for using this cartoon in teaching include focusing on assumptions (do we really know the team with the tallest player is ahead?); the selection of the best measure to summarize data (mean, median, or maximum in this case); or on the importance of variability in understanding data.

"Data Mining" is a poem by Scottish poet Eveline Pye from Glasgow Caledonin University. The poem was originally published in 1991 in the international literary journal Orbis. "Data Mining" might be used in course discussions about descriptive measures and graphics that help to illuminate a story arising from data.

The textbook, "Statistics: Unlocking the Power of Data," by Lock, Lock, Lock, Lock, and Lock, webpage has a collection of data sets which are used in their textbook. Even without the textbook, the variables are well named, and it is relatively easy to tell what the variables represent.

The textbook website for "Statistics: The Art & Science of Learning from Data," by Agresti, Franklin and Klingenberg, has a collection of Shiney Apps for visualizing statistical concepts. There are usable on computers, tablets and smart phones. Apps include Exploratory Analysis, Random Numbers, Association and Linear Regression, Distributions, Probabilities, Sampling distributions, Central Limit Theorem,, Inferential Methods (one and two samples), ANOVA, and Bootstrap Confidence Intervals & Permutation Tests.

The STatistics Education Web, also called STEW, is an online collection of peer-reviewed statistics lesson plans for K-12 teachers. The web site is maintained by the ASA and accessible to K-12 teachers throughout the world. Lessons cover a wide range of probability and statistics topics.

This complete lesson plan, which includes assessments, is based upon a data set partially discussed in the article "Female Hurricanes are Deadlier than Male Hurricanes." The data set contains archival data on actual fatalities caused by hurricanes in the United States between 1950 and 2012. Students analyze and explore this hurricane data in order to formulate a question, design and implement a plan to collect data, analyze the data by measures and graphs, and interpret the results in the context of the original question.

"The Art Of Numbers" is a poem by Scottish poet Eveline Pye from Glasgow Caledonin University. The poem was originally published in the September 2011 issue of the bimonthly magazine Significance, in an article about Eveline Pye’s statistical poetry. "The Art Of Numbers" might be used in course discussions of the meaning of statistics.

A joke that can be used in discussing standard scores (e.g. the age of the longest lived horse was about 9 standard deviations above the average lifespan) and how they are a unites measurement. The joke was written by Dennis K. Pearl from Penn State University.

A song that can be used in teaching about left-skewed data. Lyrics by Lawrence Mark Lesser of University of Texas at El Paso. The song received an honorable mention in the 2015 A-mu-sing contest. May sing to the tune of "Left of Center" by Suzanne Vega and Stephen Addabbo that was a minor hit for Joe Jackson and Vega from the 1986 soundtrack album for the coming-of-age film Pretty in Pink.

A song for use in discussing how it is important to think about variation along with averages in describing the information at hand. The music and lyrics were written by Lawrence Mark Lesser of University of Texas at El Paso. "On Average" took third place in the song category of the 2015 A-mu-sing contest.