Resource Library

This online booklet comes out of the Mosaic project. It is a guide aimed at students in an introductory statistics class. After a chapter on getting started, the chapters are grouped around what kind of variable is being analyzed. One quantitative variable; one categorical variable; two quantitative variables; two categorical variables; quantitative response, categorical predictor; categorical response, quantitative predictor; and survival time outcomes.

"Availability Heuristic" is a poem by Lawrence Mark Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. The poem was originally published in the January 2017 Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. Classroom discussion the poem may spark includes comparing and contrasting mathematical and statistical roles and language for generality, looking up and discussing the meaning of the title (a phenomenon identified by Kahneman and Tversky in 1973), exploring the"someone, somewhere" idea of Utts' Seeing Through Statistics, or discussing how many people have poor intuition with the birthday problem ("probability of at least one match in the room") because they confuse it with the birthdate ("probability at least one match with ME") problem (see letters in the summer 2014 Teaching Statistics).

"A Given A" is a song that Lawrence Mark Lesser from The University of Texas of El Paso adapted from his poem "P(A|A)" that was originally published in the January 2017 Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. In addition to providing a vehicle for general discussion (about pitfalls of post hoc analysis, multiple comparisons, or confusing the direction of causation or conditioning), the song may spark particularly lively discussion with the second verse's reference to the Bible Code, popularized by Michael Drosnin's so-named books and discussed in 1994 and 1999 papers in Statistical Science.

This is a youtube video by Jeremy Balka that was published in May 2013. The video presents a discussion of the assumptions when using the t distribution in constructing a confidence interval for the population mean. By considering various population distributions, the effect of different violations of the normality assumption is investigated through simulation.

These slides from the 2014 ICOTS workshop describe a minimal set of R commands for Introductory Statistics. Also, it describes the best way to teach them to students. There are 61 slides that start with plotting, move through modeling, and finish with randomization.

A cartoon to be used in discussing the value of stratified sampling (or blocking in experiments) with diverse populations. The cartoon was used in the January 2017 CAUSE cartoon caption contest (see "The Elevator I" for the cartoon with the winning caption). This caption is a shortened version of a caption submitted anonymously to the contest. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers based on an idea from Dennis Pearl of Penn State University.

A cartoon to be used in discussing the Elevator Paradox or other elevator related probability problems. The cartoon was used in the January 2017 CAUSE cartoon caption contest. The winning caption was written by Larry Lesser at The University of Texas at El Paso, while the drawing was created by British cartoonist John Landers based on an idea from Dennis Pearl.

A cartoon to be used for discussing the F test in ANOVA and for discussing general student anxiety about statistics. The cartoon was used in the December 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Larry Lesser at The University of Texas at El Paso, while the drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. A second winning caption "Mark was pleased to note that he was a significant outlier. Little did he know it was a two-sided test..." written by Robert Garrett, a student at Miami University is well-suited to stimulate a discussion of statistical hypothesis testing and the effect of outliers (see "Cartoon: The Exam I")

A cartoon to be used for discussing statistical hypothesis testing and the effect of outliers. The cartoon was used in the December 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Robert Garrett, a student at Miami University, while the drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. A second winning caption "The sadistic ANOVA problem made most students feel headed for an F test," written by Larry Lesser from University of Texas at El Paso is well-suited to stimulate a discussion of the F test in ANOVA and about general student anxiety about statistics (see "Cartoon: The Exam II")

A cartoon to be used for discussing the nature of conclusions for a significance test. The cartoon was used in the November 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Andrea Boito from Penn State University, Altoona, while the drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. Two honorable mentions that rose to the top of the judging in the November competition included a repackaging of the classic refrain "If you torture data enough it will confess," written by Caleb Ohrn, a student at Akron University and "Did you check to see if the conditions were met? Ignore them at your own peril!" written by an anonymous author.