Resource Library

A cartoon to be used for discussing the affect on inference caused by subject-to-subject variability and how that relates to the differences between groups. The cartoon was used in the May 2017 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. This caption was submitted by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso and took honorable mention in the contest. The drawing was created by British cartoonist John Landers based on an idea from Dennis Pearl of Penn State University. The winning caption in the May competition may be found at www.causeweb.org/cause/resources/fun/cartoons/product-testing-i (written by Jim Alloway of EMSQ Associates) and an honorable mention may be found at www.causeweb.org/cause/resources/fun/cartoons/product-testing-iii written by John Bailer from Miami University.

A cartoon to be used for discussing the value of stratification in reducing the variability of population estimates (and the difficulty in doing so when the population weights are unknown).. The cartoon was used in the May 2017 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Jim Alloway of EMSQ Associates. The drawing was created by British cartoonist John Landers based on an idea from Dennis Pearl of Penn State University. Two honorable mentions that rose to the top of the judging in the May competition may be found at https://www.causeweb.org/cause/resources/fun/cartoons/product-testing-ii written by Larry Lesser from University of Texas at El Paso and at https://www.causeweb.org/cause/resources/fun/cartoons/product-testing-iii written by John Bailer from Miami University.

A joke that might be used in a discussion of the problem of using a simple linear regression to extrapolate beyond the range of the data (where it is unlikely that the linear relationship would continue to hold). The joke was written by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.

A science fiction short story that could be used in an out-of-class assignment associated with the topic of cyclic trends in time series. The story was written in 1952 by American science fiction writer Robert Heinlein and published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.

A short story that can be used as an out-of-class assignment associated with studying the probability of rare events and issues like those that arise in the birthday problem about how the chance that an event will happen to someone differs from the chance it will happen to you. The story was written in 1973 by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and appeared in the short story compilation 'journey Across Three Worlds" (Mir Publishers, Moscow). The version here was translated from Russian to English by Gladys Evans.

A story that might be used as an out-of-class assignment associated with the study of population growth models (here the population is at equilibrium because both births and deaths are essentially non-existent). The story was written by Chris Fievoli from the Canadian Institute of Actuaries and won first place in the 8th Speculative Fiction Contest in 2009

A short story that can be used in an out-of-class assignment in association with the study of probability rules, Bayes Theorem and expectations as they relate to games of chance. The story was written by Canadian Mathematician Robert Dawson from Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and appeared in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (volume 7, issue 1, January 2017).

A short story that might be used in an out-of-class assignment to understand lifetime distributions. The story was written by Ben Marshall of FaithLife Financial in Waterloo Ontario, Canada. The story took first place in the 2007 Society of Actuaries 7th annual Speculative Fiction Contest.

A short story that might be used as an out-of-class assignment to facilitate understanding the interpretation of a 95% confidence interval as a random interval that is expected to cover the true parameter in 95% of all samples. The story was written in 2011 by Canadian mathematician Robert Dawson from Saint Mary's University in Halifax Nova Scotia. The story was published as a two part series at www.Lablit.com

A short story that might be used in an out of class assignment to explore life tables and the expected value of an annuity. The story was written by Steve Mathys from One America Companies. The story won second place in the Society of Actuaries 7th annual Speculative Fiction Contest in 2007.