Resource Library

Do not make things easy for yourself by speaking or thinking of data as if they were different from what they are; and do not go off from facing data as they are, to amuse your imagination by wishing they were different from what they are. Such wishing is pure waste of nerve force, weakens your intellectual power, and gets you into habits of mental confusion. is a quote by English mathematician and mathematics educator Mary Everest Boole (1832-1916). The quote is found on page 7 of her 1909 book "Philosophy and Fun of Algebra", (C.W. Daniel, Ltd.) written to bring then modern mathematical ideas to children. The book is available online through Project Gutenberg at www.gutenberg.org/files/13447/13447-pdf.pdf

I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians is a quote from American economist Hal R. Varian (1947 -) quoted in an August 5, 2009 "New York Times" article "For Today's Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics," written by reporter Steve Lohr. The article may be found online at www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/technology/06stats.html

At their best, graphics are instruments for reasoning about quantitative information. is a quote by American statistician and political scientist Edward R. Tufte (1942 - ). The quote appears on page 9 of Tufte's 1983 book "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information".

The purpose of this applet is to provide students with guided practice through problems on hypothesis testing for a population proportion using the method of rejection regions.

This issue contains articles about microarray data and the partnership between statisticians and biologists, ASA Stat Bowl at JSM 2005, an interview with Stat Bowl 2004 champion Jesse Frey, USCOTS 2005 plans, cluster sampling, an analysis of Civil War intelligence sleuth's Alan Pinkerton's incompetence.

This issue contains articles about the birthday problem probabilities using simulation analysis using R; making money on eBay using multiple regression to estimate prices of violins; McDonald's French fry actual mass vs. industry standard mass student project; PC vs. Mac computers survey of Harvard students; EESEE electronic story and exercise encyclopedia; 12 types of variables used in statistical analysis; the history of probability in the Enlightenment for rational decisions in law, science, and politics.

This issue contains articles about statistics in sports, including batting average, using scatterplots to predict the winners of long-distance races, regression analysis and the NFL, determining the greatest cyclist ever, simulation in public opinion polls, and determining the "best" athletes for cycling and baseball.

This issue contains an article that provides an example of a paired samples test related to flying and gliding. It also includes an article about understanding confounding from lurking variables using graphs. Other articles include: a short description about what the t-tests actually tests, an interview with David Moore about why 30 is the "magic" number, a discussion about whether or not outliers should be deleted from a data set, a discussion of observational studies, and a simulation piece about random numbers from non-random arithmetic.

This issue contains articles about binomial confidence intervals; the team effect in stock car racing; using multiple tests (one-sample t-test and sign test); the "two-envelope exchange paradox" (similar to the Monty Hall problem) with discussions of expectation, likelihood, and inference; regression line vs. trend line; calculations of standard normal table values and pi; teaching at a small liberal arts college; modeling extreme events.

This issue contains an interview with Sallie Keller-McNulty and an article about which came first -- the chicken or the egg. Other articles include a discussion related to an AP Statistics example of seeing the trees for the forest (this focuses on understanding variability between groups and within groups), a discussion of how high r can go, a simulation piece focused on shrinking students, poisoned children, and bootsraps, and an example of a permutation test of the Challenger O-Ring data.