Resource Library

This recording of a web seminar (webinar) provides a tour of the Assessment Resource Tools for Improving Statistical Thinking (ARTIST) web site. During this webinar, ARTIST team member Bob delMas guides you through the ARTIST website. The tour includes an overview of an online collection of literature on assessment in statistics education, much of which can be accessed online or downloaded. Resources for creating alternative forms of assessment such as student projects are also presented. You will also learn about efficient ways to create assessments from items from the ARTIST Item Database using a tool known as the Assessment Builder. By the end of the session, you will have learned how to select assessment items and download them in a format that can be edited with a word processor.

A quick pun about modeling and examining lack of fit by Bruce White

This Flash based applet simulates data from a case study of treatments for tumor growth in mice. This simulation allows the user to place mice into a control and treatment groups. The simulation then compares the difference in the groups based on this haphazard selection to those of a truly random assignment (the user may also create multiple random assignments and examine the sampling distribution of key statistics). The applet may be used to illustrate three points about random assignment in experiments: 1) how it helps to eliminate bias when compared with a haphazard assignment process, 2) how it leads to a consistent pattern of results when repeated, and 3) how it makes the question of statistical significance interesting since differences between groups are either from treatment or by the luck of the draw. In this webinar, the activity is demonstrated along with a discussion of goals, context, background materials, class handouts, and assessments. Key Note for Instructors: The data are drawn from a real experiment with an effective treatment but where the response is correlated with animal age and size (so tumor size will tend to be smaller in the treatment group when measured at the end of a randomized experiment but animal age and size should not be). Typically people choosing haphazardly will tend to pick larger/older animals for the treatment group and thus create a bias against the treatment.

A quick pun about the "log scale" by Bruce White

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. This quote is generally attributed to George Box. It appears in "Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces" (Wiley 1987) p. 424 by George E.P. Box & Norman R. Draper.

A quick pun about "autocorrelation" by Bruce White.

It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics. Quote found in "Reader's Digest" (December, 1961) by journalist Fletcher Knebel (1911-1993)

That's not an experiment you have there, that's an experience. Ronald A. Fisher (1890-1962.) Quoted in "Statistics", third edition, by David Freedman, Robert Pisani, and Roger Purves (Norton, 1998)

Song includes basic vocabulary from ANOVA. May be sung to "Nowhere Man" (John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Joke from "The Little Black Book of Business Statistics", by Michael C. Thomsett (1990, Amacom) p. 117. also quoted in "Statistically Speaking" compiled by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither.