Measurements Properties & Issues

  • The goal of this text is to provide a broad set of topics and methods that will give students a solid foundation in understanding how to make decisions with data. This text presents workbook-style, project-based material that emphasizes real world applications and conceptual understanding. Each chapter contains:

    • An introductory case study focusing on a particular statistical method in order to encourage students to experience data analysis as it is actually practiced.
    • guided research project that walks students through the entire process of data analysis, reinforcing statistical thinking and conceptual understanding.
    • Optional extended activities that provide more in-depth coverage in diverse contexts and theoretical backgrounds. These sections are particularly useful for more advanced courses that discuss the material in more detail. Some Advanced Lab sections that require a stronger background in mathematics are clearly marked throughout the text.
    • Data sets from multiple disciplines and software instructions for Minitab and R.

    The text is highly adaptable in that the various chapters/parts can be taken out of order or even skipped to customize the course to your audience. Depending on the level of in-class active learning, group work, and discussion that you prefer in your course, some of this work might occur during class time and some outside of class. 

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  • This website provides a comprehensive overview of descriptive statistics (mean/median/mode, range, standard deviation, and variance) through informative webpages with examples, links to data sets, and problems for the readers to try for themselves.

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  • 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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