Significance Testing Principles

Even trained statisticians often fail to appreciate the extent to which statistics are vitiated by the unrecorded assumptions of their interpreters is a quote by Irish playwright George Benard Shaw (1856 - 1950). The quote may be found in the author's preface to his 1906 play "The Doctor's Dilemma", that contains an essay on his views of statistics and quantitative literacy amongst the public.

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.

A song about examining the assumptions in statistical procedures especially dealing with skewed distributions. The lyrics were written by Robert Carver of Stonehill College and were awarded second place in the song category of the 2011 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition. The song is a parody of the 1961 classic pop song "Runaround Sue" written by Ernie Maresca and Dion DiMucci and sung by Dion backed by the vocal group, The Del-Satins. Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.

A song lyric by Dennis Pearl of The Ohio State University written as a parody of the 1960 tune "Hit the Road Jack" by Percy Mayfield; made popular by Ray Charles in his 1961 recording. What to say in class before song: There are times when the mode may be preferred to the mean - especially if the concept of interest is tied to understanding the most likely situation. You might remember that Ray Charles used to sing a song about this... In a class where Bayesian and Maximum Likelihood methodology has been introduced you might add the following after the first sentence "For example when you assume a uniform non-informative prior for a parameter, then the m.l.e. coincides with the mode of the posterior distribution - and the mean of the posterior distribution may not be a good estimate." Tip for Teaching: The song takes up a bit too much class time for delivering its message. Thus, for in-class use, it is recommended to play only the first verse or three. Musical accompaniment realization and male vocals are by Joshua Lintz, female vocals are by Mariana Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.