A cartoon that provides a clever way to introduce neural networks and machine learning topics. The cartoon was used in the June 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Luis Rivera-Galicia from Alcala University in Spain. 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 provides a clever way to introduce the statistical field of sabermetrics. The cartoon was used in the May 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Larry Lesser from the The University of Texas at El Paso. 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 for discussing how subgroup analyses often lead to false positive results (using the comical idea of someone studying your study by having both treatment arms give a placebo). The cartoon is #2726 in the web comic XKCD created by Randall Munroe.
A cartoon for describing both issues associate with meta analyses and with the large number of unreplicated scientific studies. The cartoon is #2755 in the web comic at XKCD.com by Randall Monroe (see https://xkcd.com/2755/).
A song about the value of ANCOVA in adjusting for a covariate. The lyrics were written by Greg Crowther (Everett Community College) and Leila Zelnick (University of Washington) and may be sung to the tune of "You're the One That I Want" by John Farrar and performed by Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in the movie version of Grease. This parody was performed at the UW Division of Nephrology Grand Rounds on March 18, 2022 and placed tied for second in the 2023 A-mu-sing competition. Backing track purchased from Karaoke-Version.com
A poem about type II errors in diagnostic testing using a diabetes test context. The poem was written by Lawrence Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso and received an honorable mention in the non-song category of the 2023 A-mu-sing Competition. The author also provided the following outline for a lesson plan:
Some sample questions (one per stanza) students can explore or discuss
as a practical application of statistics to a prevalent disease
that likely affects (or will) a friend or relative of almost everyone.
First stanza: Look up history of diabetes prevalence to explore questions such as: Is “1 in 10” roughly accurate for the United States and how does that compare to other countries? Was the 2003 lowering of the threshold for a prediabetes diagnosis based on updated medical understanding of the disease or more of a policy decision to give an “earlier warning”?
Second stanza: How does a hypothesis testing framework apply to an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT)? It’s warned that a false positive is possible if the patient did not eat at least 150g of carbohydrates for each of the 3 days before the test. (This is likely what happened to the poet, whose diagnosis was overturned just 2 months later by an endocrinologist.)
Third stanza: Given the usual trend that the null hypothesis usually means no effect, no difference, nothing special, explain whether it seems consistent that a normality test such as Anderson-Darling would let normality be the null. When might it make sense for a doctor to view having a particular disease as the null hypothesis (and what would be the Type I and Type II errors?)?
Fourth stanza: Explain how having only a few individual values each day from a blood glucose meter (BGM) risks missing dangerously high variability of glucose (students can Google how high variability can be a risk factor for hypoglycemia and diabetes complications). Discuss how output from a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) that records values every 5 minutes can be used to check, for example, that the coefficient of variation is sufficiently low (e.g., < 36%) and that “time in range” (e.g., 70-180 or 70-140 mg/dL) is sufficiently high. Example output is on page S86 of https://diabetesjournals.org/care/issue/45/Supplement_1.
Fifth stanza: Have students look up current FDA guidelines on how accurate over-the-counter BGM readings need to be (e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7753858/) and have them connect this to margin of error, confidence intervals, etc.
Sixth stanza: Find online the diabetes “plate method” of taking a circular plate (9” in diameter) for a meal where half of the plate would have non-starchy vegetables, a quarter having lean protein, and a quarter with carbohydrate foods such as whole grains. How do this breakdown and total quantity compare to a pie chart of a typical meal that you (or typical college undergraduates) eat?
A joke for discussing the calculus prerequisite for an upper division probability course. The joke was written by Dennis Pearl and Larry Lesser in October 2022.
A song about the trimmed mean as a robust measure of distributional center. The lyric was written by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University in May 2023 and may be sung to the tune of the KitKat jingle - music by Michael A. Levin and lyric by Ken Shuldman used in the KitKat candy bar advertisements since 1986.
A cartoon for discussing time series plots. Here an instructor might ask if the graph shown is a possible function of time. The cartoon was created by American cartoonist Jon Carter in 2017.
A cartoon to initiate a discussion about cleaning data. The cartoon was created by American cartoonist Jon Carter.