Resource Library

A song for discussion of the uses of weighting. In particular, Verse 1 hits the weighted mean (with a nod to Simpson’s paradox), Verse 2 connects with how/why poll data are weighted to help the sample more accurately reflect population characteristics, which can launch a discussion of what we adjust for (probability, sample design, demographics) and how (raking, matching, propensity weighting). This can be supported by examples in GAISE (https://www.amstat.org/docs/default-source/amstat-documents/gaisecollege...) and apps (e.g., https://sites.psu.edu/shinyapps/2018/12/03/weight-adjustment-in-surveys/). Finally, the Bridge touches on weighted regression. Lyrics by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso; may be sung to the tune of the 1981 hit "The Waiting" by Tom Petty.  The song received an honorable mention in the 2023 A-mu-sing competition.  Thanks to UTEP’s Jose Villalobos for the song title and for contributing backing vocals and guitar to Larry’s on the recording.

A poem written in 2019 by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso to discuss systematic sampling.  Students should be familiar with the lyric being sampled from (though you could provide it to make sure) and verify that the systematic sample involved sampling every third word and starting with the lyric’s first word. Students could create their own poems with different systematic samples (or different text to sample from).  The poem is part of a collection of 8 poems published with commentary in the January 2020 issue of Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.

This page calculates the standard error of a sampling distribution of sample means when users input the mean and standard deviation of the population and the sample size.

Illustrates the central limit theorem by allowing the user to increase the number of samples in increments of 100, 1000, or 10000.

This page generates a graph of the Chi-Square distribution and displays the associated probabilities. Users enter the degrees of freedom (between 1 and 20, inclusive) upon opening the page.

This page will generate a graphic and numerical display of the properties of a binomial sampling distribution, for any values of p and q, and for values of n between 1 and 40, inclusive.

Song addresses the value of a scientific poll. May be sung to the tune of the Rolling Stones' hit "It's Only Rock 'N Roll (But I Like It)" by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Musical accompaniment realizationare by Joshua Lintz and vocals are by Mariana Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.

A cartoon to teach about one difficulty in conducting education research arising from problems in obtaining reliable and valid endpoints. 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 song to be used in discussing the value of random selection in sampling and random assignment in experimentation. The lyrics were written by Mary McLellan from Aledo High School in Aledo, Texas as one of several dozen songs created for her AP statistics course. The song may be sung to the tune of the 2014 hit “All About that Bass,” by Meghan Trainor. Also, an accompanying video may be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br-5FtoYfkc

This site offers separate webpages about statistical topics relevant to those studying psychology such as research design, representing data with graphs, hypothesis testing, and many more elementary statistics concepts.  Homework problems are provided for each section.