Measurements Properties & Issues

  • A cartoon suitable for use in discussing the validity of indexes constructed to be relevant for a concept. The cartoon is number 1571 (August, 2015) from the webcomic series at xkcd.com created by Randall Munroe. Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites under a creative commons attribution-non-commercial 2.5 license.

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  • A quote to motivate discussions of government economic measures and the validity of measurements. The quote is by American economist and statistician Mollie Orshansky (1915-2006), the developer of the poverty level used by the U.S. government. The quote is from her article "Counting the Poor: Another Look at the Poverty Profile," in the January 1965 Social Security Administration Bulletin.
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  • "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." is a quote by German Physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) that can be used in discussing the validity of measurements. The quote arose in a series of lectures delivered at University of St. Andrews, Scotland in the 1955-1956 academic year and published in Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (1958).
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  • A one-liner to be used in discussions about how the statistical profession is commonly ranked high in terms of factors like demand, job satisfaction, and salary (or about the difficulty in finding a valid measurement of prestige).
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  • "Failing the possibility of measuring that which you desire, the lust for measurement may, for example, merely result in your measuring something else - and perhaps forgetting the difference - or in your ignoring some things because they cannot be measured." A quote by British statistician George Udny Yule that can be used in discussing the validity of measurements. The quote is contained on the last page of his famous 1921 British Journal of Psychology paper "The essentials of mental measurement." The quote is commonly paraphrased as "In our lust for measurement, we frequently measure that which we can rather than that which we wish to measure... and forget that there is a difference."
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  • A song for teaching concepts of estimating a population mean and addressing uncertainty in the estimate. The lyrics were written by Lawrence Mark Lesser from University of Texas at El Paso as a parody of the 2011 song "Call Me Maybe" written by Carly Rae Jepsen, Tavish Crowe, and Josh Ramsay). The lyrics were awarded second prize in the 2013 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition. Free for non-profit educational use. Musical accompaniment realization are by Joshua Lintz and vocals are by Mariana Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.

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  • A joke that can be used when teaching six sigma process control ideas or chi-squared goodness-of-fit tests. The joke was written in 2013.

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  • A poem to teach about various types of variables (categorical versus numerical versus summary statistics) and differentiating them from other concepts like the outcomes in the sample space or the sample size. The poem was composed by Lawrence Mark Lesser of The University of Texas at El Paso.
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  • A song that might be used in pre-service courses for statistics teachers (or professional development workshops) to point out why using technology is preferred to training students to use Normal Probability Tables. The lyrics were composed by Robert Carver of Stonehill College. May be sung to the tune of the "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" written by Schoenberg and Kretmer for the play Les Miserables. The lyrics won an honorable mention in the CAUSE 2013 A-Mu-sing contest. Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.
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  • The purpose of this applet is to provide students with guided practice through problems on hypothesis testing for a population proportion using the method of rejection regions.
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