Resource Library

This is short clip from a longer documentary shown on BBC. The BBC documentary takes viewers on a rollercoaster ride through the wonderful world of statistics to explore the remarkable power thay have to change our understanding of the world, presented by superstar boffin Professor Hans Rosling, whose eye-opening, mind-expanding and funny online lectures have made him an international internet legend. Rosling is a man who revels in the glorious nerdiness of statistics, and here he entertainingly explores their history, how they work mathematically and how they can be used in today's computer age to see the world as it really is, not just as we imagine it to be. Rosling's lectures use huge quantities of public data to reveal the story of the world's past, present and future development. Now he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes.

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".

August 10, 2010 T&L webinar presented by Diane Fisher (University of Louisiana at Lafayette), Jennifer Kaplan (Michigan State University), and Neal Rogness (Grand Valley State University) and hosted by Jackie Miller(The Ohio State University). Our research shows that half of the students entering a statistics course use the word random colloquially to mean, "haphazard" or "out of the ordinary." Another large subset of students define random as, "selecting without prior knowledge or criteria." At the end of the semester, only 8% of students we studied gave a correct statistical definition for the word random and most students still define random as, "selecting without order or reason." In this session we will present a classroom approach to help students better understand what statisticians mean by random or randomness as well as preliminary results of the affect of this approach.

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 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.