Stephen Colbert vs. Darryl Bem = effect size vs. statistical significance

Darryl Bem on The Colbert Report

I love me some Colbert Report. So imagine my delight when he interviewed social psychologist Darryl Bem. Bem is famous for his sex roles inventory as well as his Psi research. Colbert interviewed him about his 2012 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology article, Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for
Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect, which demonstrated a better-than-chance ability to predict an outcome. Here, the outcome was guessing which side of a computer screen would contain an erotic image (Yes, Colbert had a field day with this. Yes, please watch the clip in its entirety before sharing it with a classroom of impressionable college students).

Big deal?

Needless to say, Colbert reveled in poking fun at the "Time Traveling Porn" research. However, the interview is of some educational value because it a)does a good job of describing the research methods used in the study. Additionally, b) he calls out Bem because the better-than-average, statistically significant predictions amounted to guessing correctly 53% of the time when chance would dictate 50% of the time. Which is statistically significant but not a very powerful finding. When I use this clip in class, I typically show my students the original research article and they can compare the low Cohen's d values to the high p-values.

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Ways to use funny meme scales in your stats classes

Have you ever heard of the theory that there are multiple people worldwide thinking about the same novel thing at the same time? It is the multiple discovery hypothesis of invention . Like, multiple great minds around the world were working on calculus at the same time. Well, I think a bunch of super-duper psychology professors were all thinking about scale memes and pedagogy at the same time. Clearly, this is just as impressive as calculus. Who were some of these great minds? 1) Dr. Molly Metz maintains a curated list of hilarious "How you doing?" scales. 2) Dr. Esther Lindenström posted about using these scales as student check-ins. 3) I was working on a blog post about using such scales to teach the basics of variables. So, I decided to create a post about three ways to use these scales in your stats classes: 1) Teaching the basics of variables. 2) Nominal vs. ordinal scales. 3) Daily check-in with your students. 1. Teach your students the basics...

Leo DiCaprio Romantic Age Gap Data: UPDATE

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If your students get the joke, they get statistics.

Gleaned from multiple sources (FB, Pinterest, Twitter, none of these belong to me, etc.). Remember, if your students can explain why a stats funny is funny, they are demonstrating statistical knowledge. I like to ask students to explain the humor in such examples for extra credit points (see below for an example from my FA14 final exam). Using xkcd.com for bonus points/assessing if students understand that correlation =/= causation What are the numerical thresholds for probability? How does this refer to alpha? What type of error is being described, Type I or Type II? What measure of central tendency is being described? Dilbert: http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Kill%20Anyone Sampling, CLT http://foulmouthedbaker.com/2013/10/03/graphs-belong-on-cakes/ Because control vs. sample, standard deviations, normal curves. Also,"skewed" pun. If you go to the original website , the story behind this cakes has to do w...

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