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Updated example of using baby names to illustrate bimodal distributions.

The thing about my way of teaching stats is that my cool, novel examples get old really fast. Like, pop culture is on a thirty-day cycle. Anyway, YEARS ago, 2014 to be exact, I blogged about illustrating bimodal data distributions  using baby name data from the Social Security Administration. Specifically, when an older name comes back into vogue, it has a bimodal distribution when you plot time on the X axis.  I stand by this example. However, all of the data illustrations come from 2014. When our traditionally aged college students were 6 or 7. Which makes this example feel a little stale. However, here is some data,  courtesy of Redditor  fevaah ,  showing  old names that are back in vogue through 2025 ! And Eleanor, Violet, Nora, and Hazel are here, illustrating bimodal distributions for a new generation. If you used my old baby-name data, this is a quick, easy refresh for your lectures (or a fun new addition if you didn't).  If this idea was help...

US News's "Poll: 78 Percent of Young Women Approve of Weiner"

Best. Awful. Headline. Ever.



This headline makes it sound like many young women support the sexting, bad-decision-making, former NY representative Anthony Weiner. However, if one takes a moment to read the article, one will learn that the "young women" sampled were recruited from SeekingArrangement.com. A website for women looking for sugar daddies.

If you want your brain to further explode, read through the comments section for the article. Everyone is reacting to the headline. Very few people actually read through the article themselves...which provides further anecdotal evidence that most folks can't tell good data from bad (and that part of our job as statistics instructors, in my opinion, is to ameliorate this problem).


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