Resource Library

A fun song about the average by American humorist and singer-songwriter Carla Ulbrich. The song was a finalist in the novelty category of the 2018 USA Songwriting Competition.  The song is also available at www.theacousticguitarproject.com/artist/carla-ulbrich/ and more about the singer can be found at her website at www.carlau.com. For classroom use, you might ask which lines in "Totally Average Woman" refer to ways in which the woman in the song is at the mean, and which refer to ways in which she is at the median. Permission from singer is for free use for teaching in classroom and course websites with attribution. Commercial users must contact the copyright holder.

"By definition all scientists are data scientists. In my opinion, they are half hacker, half analyst, they use data to build products and find insights. It’s Columbus meet Columbo - starry eyed explorers and skeptical detectives," is a quote by Romanian American Data Scientist Monica Rogati. The quote is from an interview published in Forbes magazine on November 27, 2011.

"Like doctors, data scientists should pledge a Hippocratic Oath, one that focuses on the possible misuses and misinterpretations of their models," is a quote by American mathemetician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil (1972 - ).  The quote is found on page 205 of her 2016 award winning book Weapons of Math Destruction.

STATS magazine contains many articles that may be of interest to students of statistics and educators. Articles vary from those that are meant to teach and inform about different concepts and ideas to those that provide ideas for how to teach important topics to others. Some issues also include interesting data sets and information about ways to become more involved in the greater Statistics community.

A cartoon that can be helpful in introducing time series plots and their interpretation.The cartoon was used in the December 2018 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Greg Baugher from Mercer University, Penfield College. 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 to instigate discussions on the use of random numbers in both designing and analyzing data.The cartoon was used in the October 2018 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Anthony Bonifonte from Denison University. 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 help in discussing how context matters in thinking about trend and "Seasonal" patterns in time series.The cartoon was used in the July 2018 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Karsten Luebke from FOM University in Germany. The cartoon was drawnby British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.

A cartoon designed to build positive attitudes towards statistics in general and introduce some key notation.The cartoon was used in the September 2018 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Greg Baugher from Mercer University. 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 would be helpful in discussing how technology should be used to stress the importance of conceptual understanding over procedures and formulas.The cartoon was used in the May 2018 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by written by Justine Leon Uro, a student at the University of the Philippines Open University. 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 useful in applied probability courses to discuss the nature of actuarial work and the importance of accounting for rare events.The cartoon was used in the April, 2018 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso.  An alternative caption that was a co-winner in that month’s contest was "Open your eyes to catch the significant events occurring at the tails," submitted by Debmalya Nandy, a graduate student at Penn State University. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.