Observational Studies

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.

This site has the data and shows the code you would use to replicate the examples in Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence, by Judith D. Singer and John B. Willett. It has code in SAS, R, Stata, SPSS, HLM, MLwiN, and Mplus.

A quote to initiate a discussion about critiquing statistical issues in public policy statements seen in the media. The quote is from American writer and public policy researcher Kathleen Geier (1963 - ) and may be found in her article "On the importance of statistical literacy," in Washington Monthly May 12, 2012.

"Chingola Tankhouse" is a poem by Scottish poet Eveline Pye from Glasgow Caledonin University. The poem was written about her experiences working as an Operational Research Analyst for Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines in Zambia from 1975 to 1983. The poem was originally published in 1995 in Scottish literary publication West Coast Magazine. "Chingola Tankhouse" might be used in course discussions of the importance of controlling for important factors in observational studies in order to draw important conclusions.