Statistics are the food of love. A quote by American editor and author Roger Angell from his 1982 book "Late Innings: a Baseball Companion", published by Simon & Schuster. Also to be found in "Statistically Speaking the dictionary of quotations" compiled by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither p. 213
A statistics scramble that might be used in teaching goodness-of-fit significance tests. A set of five anagrams must be solved to reveal the letters that provide the answer to the clue in the cartoon. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers based on an idea by Dennis Pearl. Free for use on course websites, or as an in-class, or out-of class exercise.
Oops! ... I Picked the Wrong Test is a 4 minute, 12 second video that provides a fun review of common mistakes made in conducting hypothesis tests. The video was first sung for students in a Psychology class at the University of Oregon. The singer is Jennifer Simonds, Ph.D. of Westminster College in Salt Lake City Utah (where the video was filmed). The song is a parody of "Oops ... I did it again" by Britney Spears (2000). Characters: Britney Spearman - Jennifer Simonds, Chuck - Chuck Tate, Frustrated Professor - Bill Bynum, Dancers - Cressa Perloff (dance captain), Kathleen Ware, and Mariah Mercer. Credits: Lyrics, vocals, directions, and production by Jennifer Simonds; Recording and Sound Engineering by Ted Sablay; Final Cut Consulting by Zelda Randazzo; Audio Sync Assistance by Lizzie Randazzo; Camera Work and Props by Amy Fairchild. This video won the overall Grand Prize in the 2009 CAUSE A-Mu-sing contest.
These three haikus were written as part of an activity in Paul Roback's introductory statistics class at St. Olaf College in February, 2009 ("World of chaos" by Carolyn Raitt; "Reality bites" by Hannah Johnson; "Is it you or me" by Nicole Villa). As a collection, the haikus won first place in the poetry category of the 2009 A-Mu-sing competition. The entire class is shown in this picture: http://www.causeweb.org/resources/fun/pics/Roback_class.jpg
This is my take on the ubiquitous M&Ms counting activity. Each student records the color proportions in a fun-size bag of M&Ms. We pool the class data and run a Chi-Square goodness-of-fit test to determine whether or not the color proportions match those claimed on the manufacturer's website. We consistently find that the proportions do not match. The blue M&Ms, in particular, are underrepresented. This activity also includes a review of the 1-proportion z confidence interval.
A cartoon to teach about the interpretation of confidence statements. The cartoon plays on the idea of what would happen if the same process was repeated over-and-over again. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea from Dennis Pearl (The Ohio State University). Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.
A cartoon to teach about the value of confidence intervals compared with just giving a point estimate. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea from Dennis Pearl (The Ohio State University). Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.
A joke about the tendency for Math and Statistics textbooks to have an abundance of homework style problems.
Song about the benefits of the Bayesian approach to statistics. May be sung to the tune of Sonny and Cher's 1965 song "I Got You Babe." Lyrics by Matthew Finkelman (December, 2003). This song is part of the "Stanford Statistics Songbook" found at www.bscb.cornell.edu/~hooker/StanfordStatisticsSongbook.pdf Free to use for non-commercial educational purposes. Contact author to use in publications or for commercial purposes. Musical accompaniment realization by Joshua Lintz male vocals by Joshua Lintz and female vocals by Marianna Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.