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".

July 27, 2010 Activity Webinar presented by Herle McGowan, North Carolina State University and hosted by Leigh Slauson, Capital University. Extra materials available for download free of charge. In this webinar, the webinar discusses the end-of-semester project that is used in North Carolina State's introductory statistics course. This project supports statistical thinking by allowing students to apply knowledge accumulated throughout the semester. Students are presented with a research question and must design and carry out an experiment, analyze the resulting data and form a conclusion over the course of several class periods.

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 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.

February 8, 2011 T&L webinar presented by Uri Treisman (Charles Dana Center, University of Texas at Austin) and hosted by Jackie Miller (The Ohio State University). Developmental education in America's community colleges has been a burial ground for the aspirations of our students seeking to improve their lives through education. Under the leadership for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Charles A. Dana Center, nineteen community colleges and systems are building accelerated pathways to and through developmental education with the goal of helping students with low levels of mathematical preparation complete a college credit bearing, transferable statistics course within one year. Uri will describe the work to date, the challenges the initiative faces, and the underlying ideas of improvement science that are driving its development.

Experts often possess more data than judgment. is a quote by former U.S. four-star general and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell (1937 - ). The quote is found in lesson three in the article "Quotations from Chairman Powell: A Leadership Primer" by Oren Harari originally published in 1996 in "Management Review".

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. is a quote from American computer scientist Donald E. Knuth (1938 - ). The quote was written on March 22, 1977 as the last sentence of a five-page memo entitled "Notes on the van Emde Boas construction of priority deques: An instructive use of recursion."

Although we often hear that data speak for themselves, their voices can be soft and sly. is a quote by American statistician Charles Frederick Mosteller (1916 - 2006). The quote is found on page 234 of his 1983 book "Beginning Statistics with Data Analysis".