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...
In the past, I've used fake data based on real research to create stats class examples. Baby names, NICUs, and paired t-test. Pain, surgical recovery, and ANOVA.
Today, I've decided to use fake data and fake research to create a real example for teaching one-sample t-test. It uses this research report from The Onion:
In this press release, the baby scientists claim that the belief that a baby could only smash four peas into their ear canal were false. Based upon new research recommendations, that number has been revised to six. Which sure sounds like a one-sample t-test to me. Four is the mu assumed true based upon previous baby ear research. And the sample data had a mean of 6, and this was statistically significant.
Here is some dummy data that I created that replicates these findings, when mu/test value is set to 4. :
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Why, yes, I do think I'm pretty clever.
Today, I've decided to use fake data and fake research to create a real example for teaching one-sample t-test. It uses this research report from The Onion:
 |
| https://www.theonion.com/toddler-scientists-finally-determine-number-of-peas-tha-1820347088 |
In this press release, the baby scientists claim that the belief that a baby could only smash four peas into their ear canal were false. Based upon new research recommendations, that number has been revised to six. Which sure sounds like a one-sample t-test to me. Four is the mu assumed true based upon previous baby ear research. And the sample data had a mean of 6, and this was statistically significant.
Here is some dummy data that I created that replicates these findings, when mu/test value is set to 4. :
5.00
6.00
7.00
6.00
5.00
6.00
6.00
5.00
7.00
6.00
7.00
Why, yes, I do think I'm pretty clever.