Resource Library

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. is a famous quote of English historian Sir John Dalberg-Acton (1834 - 1902). Of course, Lord Acton was not referring to statistical hypothesis testing when he made the remark in an April 1887 letter to Mandell Creighton. However, the widespread knowledge of the quote by students makes it an interesting way to cover the idea that statistical significance is not the same as practical significance.

Sampling Samba is a video that may be used to discuss and compare various methods of sampling. The methods described include random sampling, systematic sampling, stratified sampling, and cluster sampling. The video was written by Camilla Guatteri (SeeYouGee on You-Tube) and edited by Alessandro Pederzoli.

A cartoon to teach the idea that the mean of a distribution is found by integrating xf(x).

Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that. This is a quote from the cartoon character Homer Simpson created by cartoonist Matt Groening (1954 - ) in 1987. The quote occurs in an episode of "The Simpsons" entitled "Homer the Vigilante" that originally aired on January 6, 1994. This episode was written by John Swartzwelder (1950 - )

A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: 'Duh.' This a quote from American comedian and talk show host Conan O'Brien (1963 - ) delivered on his TV show "Late Night with Conan O'Brien".

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. This is a quote by American computer scientist Alan C. Kay (1940 - ). The quote was said at a 1971 meeting of Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center.

September 22, 2009 Activity Webinar presented by Diane Evans, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and hosted by Leigh Slauson, Capital University. This webinar is based on an activity found at www.lhs.logan.k12.ut.us/~jsmart/tank.htm and other on-line resources (see references). During World War II, the British and U.S. statisticians used estimation methods to deduce the productivity of Germany's armament factories using serial numbers found on captured equipment, such as tanks. The tanks were numbered in a manner similar to 1, 2, 3, ..., N, and the goal of the allies was to estimate the population maximum N from their collected sample of serial numbers. The purpose of this activity is to introduce students to the concept of an unbiased estimator of a population parameter. Students develop several estimators for the parameter N and compare them by running simulations in Minitab. Extra materials available for download free of charge.

;;; statistics is not a branch of mathematics. Indeed so; the whole of applied mathematics is merely a branch of statistics in which random error is reduced to zero. This a quote from Statistician and former associate director of the Census Bureau and ASA President Barbara Bailar (1935 - ). The quote is found in the January 1988 "College Mathematics Journal" as part of her written response to David Moore's article "Should Mathematicians Teach Statistics?."

This song is an ode to bad teaching in statistics written by Dennis Pearl to be sung to the tune of Roger Miller's 1965 classic country/pop tune "King of the Road." Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.

In our society, if you love dogs, cats, or goldfish you're considered normal and even nice. Say a kind word for statistics and you're regarded as a little mad. This is a quote from Newsweek and Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson (1945 - ). The quote appears in a column titled "The Joy of Statistics" in "Newsweek" on November 4, 1985.