Skip to main content

Latest Post:

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...

Daily Cycles in Twitter Content: Psychometric Indicators


Here is a YouTube video that summarizes some research findings. The researchers looked at Tweets in order to study how are focus and emotions change with our sleep/wake cycles.

And the findings are interesting and not terribly surprising. Folks are mellow and rational in the morning and contemplate their mortality at 2 AM.

Make money, get paid.

And THIS is why I go to bed by 9 AM. I don't need to think about death at 2:20 AM.


How to use in class:

1) Archival data (via Tweet) to explore human emotion.
2) What are the shortcomings of this sample method. To be sure, their data set is ENORMOUS, but how are Twitter users different from other people? Do your students think these findings would hold for people who work the night shift?
3) Go back to the original paper and look more closely at the findings: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0197002
4) This data represents one of the ways that researchers collect real-time information on emotional states. Remember when we used to give participants beepers and notebooks to record their emotions?
5) Is it ethical to use this research this way? Does this come under the umbrella of Terms of Service or do your students think that participants should have the chance to opt out of having their data used this way?

Popular posts from this blog

Leo DiCaprio Romantic Age Gap Data: UPDATE

Does anyone else teach correlation and regression together at the end of the semester? Here is a treat for you: Updated data on Leonardo DiCaprio, his age, and his romantic partner's age when they started dating. A few years ago, there was a dust-up when a clever Redditor r/TrustLittleBrother realized that DiCaprio had never dated anyone over 25. I blogged about this when it happened. But the old data was from 2022. Inspired by this sleuthing,  I created a wee data set, including up-to-date information on his current relationship with Vittoria Ceretti, so your students can suss out the patterns that exist in this data.
Read more

Ways to use funny meme scales in your stats classes

Have you ever heard of the theory that there are multiple people worldwide thinking about the same novel thing at the same time? It is the multiple discovery hypothesis of invention . Like, multiple great minds around the world were working on calculus at the same time. Well, I think a bunch of super-duper psychology professors were all thinking about scale memes and pedagogy at the same time. Clearly, this is just as impressive as calculus. Who were some of these great minds? 1) Dr.  Molly Metz maintains a curated list of hilarious "How you doing?" scales.  2) Dr. Esther Lindenström posted about using these scales as student check-ins. 3) I was working on a blog post about using such scales to teach the basics of variables.  So, I decided to create a post about three ways to use these scales in your stats classes:  1) Teaching the basics of variables. 2) Nominal vs. ordinal scales.  3) Daily check-in with your students.  1. Teach your students the basics...
Read more

Logical Fallacy Ref Meme

So, I love me some good statsy memes. They make a brief, important point that sticks in the heads of students. I've recently learned of the Logical Fallacy Ref meme. Here are a couple that apply to stats class:
Read more