A cartoon to illustrate the difference between the population of interest and the sampling frame for a survey. The cartoon was drawn by British cartonist John Landers in May 2021 based on an idea from Larry Lesser (University of Texas at El Paso) and Dennis Pearl (Penn State University).
A joke to help in a discussion of how a well designed experiment helps to reduce the variance of the response variable. The Joke was written by Larry Lesser (The University of Texas at El Paso) and Dennis Pearl (Penn State University) in Februrary 2021.
Note - when the joke is spoken there is no need to say the parenthetical part - simply pronounce the word "variants" to sound like "variance".
A poem to help in discussing matched-pair designs. UTEP Professor Larry Lesser wrote this poem on February 1, 2021, using end-rhyme couplets to convey (literally and figuratively) tradeoffs of a design with matched pairs. Note that the rhymes are not always perfect, a reflection of how it can be impossible to match subjects perfectly. Also note how the would-be final couplet is ruined by losing its second line, just as you effectively lose two subjects when one subject in a pair chooses to drop out of your study.
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 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 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.
A cartoon that links well with the famous Isaac Newton apple tree fable and can be used for discussing the importance of data to speed innovation in any discipline from science to business to public policy. The cartoon was used in the October 2019 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Eric Vance from 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 for discussing data wrangling issues involved with bringing together data of varying file formats, naming conventions, and columns and transforming it into one cohesive data set. The cartoon was used in the September 2019 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Larry Lesser from 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 that can be used for discussions that compare and contrast survey samples versus a census. The cartoon was used in the August 2019 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Jim Alloway from EMSQ Associates. 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 joke to facilitate discussion of random assignment in an experiment. The joke was written by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso in May, 2020.