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...
Reddit user jonjiv conducted a case study in human language development. He carefully monitored his son's speaking ability, and here is what he found:
How to use in class:
1) Good for Developmental Psychology. Look at that naming explosion!
2) Good to demonstrate how nerdy data collection can happen in our own lives.
3) Within versus between subject design. Instead of sampling separate 10, 11, 12, etc. month old children, we have real-time data collected from one child. AND this isn't retrospective data, either.
4) Jonjiv even briefly describes his "research methodology" in the original post. The word had to be used in a contextually appropriate manner AND observed by both him and his wife (inter-rater reliability!). He also stored his data in a Google sheet because of convenience/ease of tracking via cell phone.
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| https://imgur.com/gallery/KwZ6C#qLwsn9S...go to this link for a clearer picture of the chart! |
How to use in class:
1) Good for Developmental Psychology. Look at that naming explosion!
2) Good to demonstrate how nerdy data collection can happen in our own lives.
3) Within versus between subject design. Instead of sampling separate 10, 11, 12, etc. month old children, we have real-time data collected from one child. AND this isn't retrospective data, either.
4) Jonjiv even briefly describes his "research methodology" in the original post. The word had to be used in a contextually appropriate manner AND observed by both him and his wife (inter-rater reliability!). He also stored his data in a Google sheet because of convenience/ease of tracking via cell phone.