As described in Wired's pop piece, the average body temperature for healthy adults isn't 98.6℉. Instead, data suggests that it is 97.7℉. Here is a link to the original study by  Hausmann, Berna, Ggujral, Ayubi, Howekins, Brownstein, & Dedeoglu . 1. This is an excellent theoretical example for explaining a situation where a one-sample t-test could answer your research question. 2. I created fake data that jive with the results, so you can conduct the test with your students. This data set mimicked the original findings for healthy adults (M = 97.7, SD = .72) and was generated with Andy Luttrell's Data Generator for Teaching Statistics . 97.39 97.45 97.96 97.35 96.74 99.66 98.21 99.02 96.78 97.70 96.90 97.29 97.99 97.73 98.18 97.78 97.17 97.34 97.56 98.13 97.77 97.07 97.13 9...

Explain validity to your students AND earn some "I'm still hip!" street cred using this The Tonight Show clip that features a Buzzfeed quiz AND exactly one Jonas brother. Nick Jonas took a "Which Jonas Brother are you?" Buzzfeed quiz. He scores as Joe Jonas. Ergo, the Buzzfeed assessment measure is not valid. It does not properly assess what it purports to assess. Watch the video for yourself. If you want to take this example a step further, you could have your students take the original quiz, discuss the questions and their ability to discern which Jonas Brother is which, you could describe Nick Jonas as a Nick Jonas Subject Matter Expert, maybe Social Desirability got in the way of Nick answering the questions honestly, etc. Another thing I've noticed as my blog and I have aged together: There are now generations of Buzzfeed quiz assessments that provide great examples for different age groups: Gen X: Shirley Manson did not score as Shirley ...

Emily Watson, writing for NPR, describes medical research by Ogilvie, vanNiekerk, & Krajden . This research provides a timely, topical example of false positives, false negatives, medical research, and gets your students thinking a bit more flexibly about measurement. This research provides valuable information about debate in medicine: What method of cervical cancer detection is most accurate: The traditional Pap smear, or an HPV screening? The Pap smear works by scraping cells off of a cervix and having a human view and detect abnormal cervical cancer cells. The HPV test, indeed, detects HPV. Since HPV causes 99% of cervical cancers, its presence signals a clinician to perform further screen, usually a colonoscopy. The findings: Women over 30 benefit more from the HPV test. How to use this example in class: - This is a great example of easy-to-follow  research methodology and efficacy testing in medicine. A question existed: Which is better, Pap or HPV test? The questi...

This is a remix of a bunch of posts. I brought them together because they fit a common theme: Examples that use actual data that researchers collected but still manage to lie or mislead with real data. So, lying with facts. These examples hit upon a number of themes in my stats classes: 1) Statistics in the wild 2) Teaching our students to sniff out bad statistics 3) Vivid examples are easier to remember than boring examples. Here we go: Making Graphs Fox News using accurate data and inaccurate charts to make unemployment look worse than it is. Misleading with Central Tendency The mean cost of a wedding in 2004 might have been $28K...if you assume that all couples used all possible services, and paid for all of the services. Also, maybe the median would have been the more appropriate measure to report. Don't like the MPG for the vehicles you are manufacturing? Try testing your cars under ideal, non-real world conditions to fix that. Then get fined by the EPA. Mis...