General Rules

  • "A Given A" is a song that Lawrence Mark Lesser from The University of Texas of El Paso adapted from his poem "P(A|A)" that was originally published in the January 2017 Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. In addition to providing a vehicle for general discussion (about pitfalls of post hoc analysis, multiple comparisons, or confusing the direction of causation or conditioning), the song may spark particularly lively discussion with the second verse's reference to the Bible Code, popularized by Michael Drosnin's so-named books and discussed in 1994 and 1999 papers in Statistical Science.
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  • A rap about the basic rules of probability. The music and lyrics were written by Lawrence Mark Lesser of University of Texas at El Paso and won an honorable mention in the 2015 A-mu-sing contest. This song is part of an NSF-funded library of interactive songs that involved students creating responses to prompts that are then included in the lyrics (see www.causeweb.org/smiles for the interactive version of the song, a short reading covering the topic, and an assessment item).

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  • "The Law of Statistics" is a poem by Scottish poet Eveline Pye from Glasgow Caledonin University. The poem was originally published in the February 2016 issue of Talking Writing magazine. "The Law of Statistics" is about the case of Sally Clark, who was wrongly convicted in England of killing two of her children based on an error in "expert" testimony regarding the probability of two crib deaths in the same family. The poem might be used in course discussions about conditional probability and Bayes Theorem.
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  • A poem useful in teaching aspects about hypothesis testing, especially the caveat that unimportant differences may be deemed significant with a large sample size. The poem was written by Mariam Hermiz, a student at University of Toronto, Mississauga in Fall 2010 as part of an assignment in a biometrics class taught by Helene Wagner. The poem was awarded first place in the poetry category of the 2011 CAUSE A-Mu-sing contest.

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  • A Haiku about the meaning of significance by Dr. Nyaradzo Mvududu of the Seattle Pacific University School of Education. The poem was awarded a tie for second place in the 2011 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition.

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  • A song about the important contributions of Karl Pearson, Charles Spearmen, William S. Gosset, and Ronald Fisher. Lyrics written by Nyaradzo Mvududu from Seattle Pacific University. May sing to the tune of John Lennon's 1971 song "Imagine." The lyrics were awarded third place in the song category of the 2011 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition. Musical accompaniment realization are by Joshua Lintz and vocals are by Mariana Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.

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  • Hot streaks are a statistical illusion! This is a quote from the cartoon character Lisa Simpson created by cartoonist Matt Groening (1954 - ) in 1987. The quote occurs in an episode of The Simpsons entitled "MoneyBART" that originally aired on October 10, 2010. This episode was written by Tim Long (1969 - ).
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  • January 26, 2010 webinar presented by Alicia Gram, Smith College, and hosted by Leigh Slauson, Capital University. This webinar describes an activity that uses data collected from an experiment looking at the relationship between two categorical variables: whether a cotton plant was exposed to spider mites; and did the plant contract Wilt disease? The activity uses randomization to explore whether there is a difference between the occurrence of the disease with and without the mites. The webinar includes a discussion of the learning goals of the activity, followed by an implementation of the activity then suggestions for assessment. The implementation first uses a physical simulation, then a simulation using technology. (Extra materials, including Fathom instructions for the simulation, available for download free of charge).

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  • Statistics are to baseball what a flaky crust is to Mom's apple pie. is a quote by American television journalist Harry Reasoner (1923 - 1991). The quote was said in a story on the news magazine show, "60 minutes."
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  • Most accidents in well-designed systems involve two or more events of low probability occurring in the worst possible combination. is a quote by American systems engineering expert Robert E. Machol (1917 - 1998). The quote is found in his 1975 column "Principles of Operations Research" for the journal "Interfaces" vol. 5, pages 53-54 (this column was titled "The Titanic Coincidence."
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