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Showing posts from April, 2018

Geckoboard's "Data fallacies to avoid"

Geckoboard created a list of common statistical fallacies , including cherry picking, Simpson's paradox, gerrymandering, and many more. Each fallacy comes with a brief description of the fallacy, references, a printable card for review/display, and drawing. They are kind of gorgeous and to the point and helpful. https://www.geckoboard.com/learn/data-literacy/statistical-fallacies/sampling-bias/ Here is the downloadable card for the Regression Toward the Mean: https://www.geckoboard.com/assets/regression-toward-the-mean.pdf They even present all of their graphics as  a free, downloadable poster . My only peeve is that they use the term "Data Dredging" where I would have said "HARKing" or "Going on a fishing expedition". And that is just the tiniest of peeves, I think this is a good check list filled with images and concise descriptions that would look beautiful in a college professor's office, a stats class room, or anonymously ...

Mathisfun.com's Least Squared Error calculator

Mathisfun.com bills this as a Least Squared Error calculator , but I don't think it is a calculator. I think it is a nice visual aid that demonstrates how the regression line/equation change as your data changes. The static photo below doesn't do this interactive website justice. You can drag and drop any of the dots on the scatter plot and watch as the regression line and regression line equation are recalculated to best predict Y based on X. It doesn't explicitly show the math going on behind the scenes, but it is a nice compliment to your LSE lecture. https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/least-squares-calculator.html

Chi-square via The Onion's "Saying ‘Smells Okay’ Precedes 85% Of Foodborne Illnesses Annually"

Once again, The Onion publishes satire research (which should be, like, a submission category for JPSP) claiming to study phrases uttered before food poisoning happens . https://www.theonion.com/report-saying-smells-okay-precedes-85-of-foodborne-1819579726 I've turned this fake research into fake data to conduct an actual chi-square test of goodness of fit. Here is data that will give you a significant chi square, with 85% of participants falling into the "smells okay" category. Did sick person say aid "Smells Okay" before eating leftovers? No Yes 19 106