Statistics is the art of stating in precise terms that which one does not know. A quote by American Statistician William Henry Kruskal (1919 - 2005) in his article "Statistics, Moliere, and Henry Adams," in "American Scientist Magazine" (1967; vol. 55, page 417).The quote also appears in "Statistically Speaking: A dictionary of quotations" compiled by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither.
A joke about the need for students to explain how they arrived at the answers they provide on exams.
Song about the use of the logarithmic transformation in statistics. May be sung to the tune of "Hound Dog" which was popularized by Elvis Presley. Lyrics written by Dennis Pearl with assistance from Deb Rumsey. Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.
It is easy to lie with statistics, but it is easier to lie without them. Quote attriuted to Frederick Mosteller (1916 - 2006)
This is my take on the ubiquitous M&Ms counting activity. Each student records the color proportions in a fun-size bag of M&Ms. We pool the class data and run a Chi-Square goodness-of-fit test to determine whether or not the color proportions match those claimed on the manufacturer's website. We consistently find that the proportions do not match. The blue M&Ms, in particular, are underrepresented. This activity also includes a review of the 1-proportion z confidence interval.
an old "walks into a bar" joke with a statistics twist.
A cartoon to teach about the family of t-distributions including their relationship to the normal distribution. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea and sketch from Sheila O. Weaver (University of Vermont). This is part of a three cartoon set that took first place in the cartoon category of the 2007 A-Mu-sing competition. Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.
A cartoon to teach about the capture-recapture method to estimate population size. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea and sketch from Sheila O. Weaver (University of Vermont). This is part of a three cartoon set that took first place in the cartoon category of the 2007 A-Mu-sing competition. Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.
A cartoon to teach about the capture-recapture method. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea and sketch from Sheila O. Weaver (University of Vermont). This is part of a three cartoon set from Dr. Weaver that took first place in the cartoon category of the 2007 A-Mu-sing competition. Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.
A cartoon about the perception that statistics exams are difficult. 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.