A quick "hands on" activity for an in-class experience of data collection as a simple linear regression example where students predict the time needed for a human chain of hand squeezes to make a full circuit as a function of number of people in the chain. The lesson plan secondary school lesson plan adapted from Cynthia Lanius’ hand squeeze activity by Bo Brawner at Tarleton State University.
A poem written in 2019 by Sabrina Little, a middle school student at the Mackintosh Academy in Boulder, CO. She entered it into the American Mathematical Society’s Math Poetry Contest contest for Colorado middle school, high school, and undergraduate students in connection with the 2020 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Denver. Sabina’s poem was judged the winner in the category for middle school students. The poem uses imagery which can enhance a lesson on line of fit and outliers. Sabrina Little read her poem at the 2020 Joint Mathematics Meetings (see 2:42 mark of the video posted at http://www.ams.org/programs/students/math-poetry).
A pun to familiarize students with Anscombe's Quartet - the group of 4 data sets with the same means, standard deviations, correlations, and regression lines for X and Y that were produced by British statistician Frank Anscombe in a 1973 paper in the American Statistician. The joke was written in 2016 by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. This joke should be used in a written form since students will not "get" the joke if they have never heard of Anscombe's Quartet - the value for teaching coming from having them look it up. Alternatively, it can be used in an oral presentation following an activity on this topic.
Statz 4 Life is a 5 minute, 13 second video that provides a fun review of statistical inference topics (for example, the theme of examining observed differences in the numerator and error in the denominator). The video was first shown on May 18, 2006 in Chuck Tate's research methods course, while he was a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon. The rappers are (in order of appearance): Jeph Loucks, Chuck Tate, Chelan Weaver, and Cara Lewis. Jennifer Simonds provides the singing talent. Credits: Concept, lyrics, and cinematography by Chuck Tate, audio mixing by Jeph Loucks, and video editing by Chuck Tate and Jeph Loucks. The background beat is Nelly's song "Grillz," of which this video is a parody.
A cartoon that can used to help discuss the difference between large and small datasets and the kinds of issues involved in analyzing them and the questions that can be answered with them. The cartoon was used in the April 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Eric Vance from the University of Colorado Boulder. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.
A cartoon using a pun on the need for a key in a graph, and a way to support a discussion of the importance of properly labelling any graphical display. The cartoon was used in the March 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Jason Hu, a student at Strath Haven High School in Pennsylvania. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.
A cartoon designed to support a discussion of using dummy variables to code for categories of a categorical variable in a regression model (e.g. 5 are needed when there are 6 categories). The cartoon was used in the February 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Dominic Matriccino, a student at the University of Virginia. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University. A second winner in the February 2020 contest was "The grass really is greener on the homogeneity side," written by Jennifer Ann Morrow, an instructor from University of Tennessee. Jennifer's cartoon caption can be used in discussing the importance of within-group variability in judging differences between groups and the difficulty when the groups being compared have different levels of variability.
A cartoon that can be used to motivate the importance of statistics in making decisions. The cartoon was used in the January 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Douglas VanDerwerken, an instructor at the United States Naval Academy. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.
A cartoon that supports the importance of coding, and the how statistical computations and simulations using technology has created a variety of new possibilities in statistics. The cartoon was used in the December 2019 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Nicholas Varberg, a student at the University of Colorado Boulder. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.
A cartoon that can be used to motivate the importance of statistics in gleaning understanding from the large amounts of data in the modern world. The cartoon was used in the November 2019 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Shawn Orton, an instructor at the Waterford School. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.