Resource Library

A song for teaching concepts of estimating a population mean and addressing uncertainty in the estimate. The lyrics were written by Lawrence Mark Lesser from University of Texas at El Paso as a parody of the 2011 song "Call Me Maybe" written by Carly Rae Jepsen, Tavish Crowe, and Josh Ramsay). The lyrics were awarded second prize in the 2013 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition. Free for non-profit educational use. Musical accompaniment realization are by Joshua Lintz and vocals are by Mariana Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.

This activity explains the important features of a distribution: shape, center, spread, and unusual features. It also covers how to determine the difference between mean and median, and their respective measures of spread, as well as when to apply them to a particular distribution. Graphical displays such as: histograms and boxplots are also introduced in this activity. The corresponding data set for this activity is found at the following web address: http://www.causeweb.org/repository/ACT/food.txt

Chance is only the measure of our ignorance. A quote from French mathematician and physicist Jules Henri Poincare (1854 - 1912) found in "The Foundations of Science", page 395, The Science Press, 1913. The quote also appears in "Statistically Speaking: A dictionary of quotations" compiled by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither.

Statistically Speaking is a 5 minute 35 second video that can be used in discussing various concepts in descriptive statistics. The video was written, directed, and produced by Cameron W. Hatch and the cast includes (order of appearance) Mala Grewal, Sally Atkinson, Griffin Hatch, Jeff Hatch, Matt Burnham, and Sylvia Burnham.

This song that may be used in teaching about box plots. The lyrics were written by Alan Reifman, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Texas Tech University. The lyrics may be sung to the tune of Billy Joel's 1978 song "Big Shot." The lyrics won first prize in the song category of the 2009 A-Mu-sing contest. Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.

A cartoon to teach the idea that the mean is affected by outliers while the median is not. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea from Dennis Pearl (The Ohio State University). Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.

A statistics scramble that might be used in teaching about the relationship between the mean and the median in a skewed distribution. A set of five anagrams must be solved to reveal the letters that provide the answer to the clue in the cartoon. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers based on an idea by Dennis Pearl. Free for use on course websites, or as an in-class, or out-of class exercise.

A set of twenty statistics anagrams that might be used for an end of semester terminology review. This collection of anagrams appeared in the article "Even More Fun Learning Stats" by Lawrence M. Lesser in issue #49 (2007) of "Stats" magazine (pp.5-8,19, 27).

Who says a statistics teacher can't play a `mean` guitar ... with X-barre chords? Quote by University of Texas at El Paso professor of Mathematical Sciences, Lawrence Mark Lesser (1964-)

Three Haiku related to regression including the topics of checking assumptions, dealing with non-linear patterns, and partitioning sums of squares. The Haiku were written by Elizabeth Stasny of The Ohio State University and were awarded a tie for second place in the poetry category of the 2011 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition.