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...
Many stats instructors use dice and/or coin flips to teach their students about distributions, probably, CLT. Here is an alternative to physical coins and dice, in case you are teaching from a distance. Certainly, there are countless other websites that will roll a dice or flip a coin for you, but these simple websites created by Google are intuitive and pretty.
Using Google's dice rolling simulator, you can roll a standard six-sided die. Or a DnD 20 sided die. Or multiple dice. I included the link, but all you need to do Google "Roll dice" to get to the website.
Google also lets you flip a coin. This simulator doesn't have any fancy options, and you can get to it simply by Googling, "Flip a coin".
