Resource Library

A song about the various cautions that go with interpreting the P-value especially the large sample caution, a strict reliance on the 5% significance level, and errors in interpreting results as proof of a hypothesis. The song and musical arrangements in the video were written by Michael Greenacre of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona and may be sung to the tune of Irving Berlin's "There's no business like show business." The lyrics were sung by Gurdeep Stephens in the recording. The video took second place in the 2015 A-mu-sing contest.

A song to be used in discussing experimental design and the importance of control, replication, randomization, and blocking. The song was written by Laura Krajewski, an undergraduate student at University of Toronto, Mississauga and took first place in the 2015 A-mu-sing contest. May be sung to the tune of "I Love You Will Still Sound the Same" by Oh Honey.

A poem consisting of two quasi Haikus that can used in discussing the Cramer-Rao lower bound on the variance of a normally distributed statistic. The poem was written by Ming-Lun Ho of Chabot College and was given a third place award in the 2015 A-mu-sing contest.

A joke by Larry Lesser of University of Texas at El Paso that can be used in discussing the uniform probability distribution.

A 2015 video by Amelia Baechtel, an AP Statistics student from Magrudger High School, that can be used in discussing the use of the normal distribution. The video received an honorable mention in the 2015 A-mu-sing contest.

A song to teach the basic idea of Analysis of Variance - comparing the variance between groups to the variance within groups. May be sung to the tune of the classic Christmas song "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" (John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie). The lyrics were written by Dennis Pearl of Penn State University. Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.

A song that can help launch critical discussion of common impressions about the role of data, sample size, and significance testing. May be sung to the tune of the signature 90s hit "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Nirvana). Lyrics by Lawrence Mark Lesser of University of Texas at El Paso who first published them in the September 2015 issue of Amstat News.

A cartoon that can be used in discussions about sampling plans, the dangers of voluntary sampling, and the importance of human subjects review in carrying out research. The "Dragon sampling" idea was due to Dennis Pearl of Penn State University. The caption came from the participants at a 2015 USCOTS breakout session as part of a caption writing activity facilitated by Dennis Pearl, Larry Lesser, and John Weber. The cartoon was sketched live during a previous session by British cartoonist John Landers with the color version being finished during this second session (see Dragon Sampling I for the caption created during the first session). This is the second of two captions for this cartoon. All Landers copyrighted cartoons on CAUSEweb are free for non-profit educational use.

A cartoon that can be used in discussions about sampling plans and the difficulty of implementing a plan (or in discussions of inclusion and exclusion criteria in an experiment). The "Dragon sampling" idea was due to Dennis Pearl of Penn State University. The caption came from the participants at a 2015 USCOTS breakout session as part of a caption writing activity facilitated by Dennis Pearl, Larry Lesser, and John Weber. The cartoon was sketched live during the session by British cartoonist John Landers (with the color version being finished during a second session). This is the first of two captions for this cartoon. All Landers copyrighted cartoons on CAUSEweb are free for non-profit educational use.

"Our ability to use data effectively to make decisions or understand the world depends on our ability to see patterns and abstract from those patterns." is a quote by Dr. Felicia B LeClere (1958 - ), Senior Fellow at the National Opinion Research Ceenter (NORC) at University of Chicago. The quote is contained in an August 19, 2013 essay "Walking into Big Data" in the web magazine Inside Higher Ed.