Dr. Morton Anne Gernsbacher's online Intro to Stats class

Dr. Morton Anne Gernsbacher has freely shared her WHOLE Psychological Statistics class with the world. No paywalls, no log-ins. Divided up sensibly, including sections on effect sizes and Bayesian. With some assistance from Chelsea Andrews, she created this phenomenal resource for all of us to use. While I'm focusing on her stats class, be sure to check out her amazing Research Methods and Psychological Effects of the Internet courses.

DO NOTE: I'm not primarily recommending this directly as a resource as a class for students. I'm recommending it to you, instructors, as a source of great, free statistical readings and teaching ideas that you could incorporate into your own classes. This is especially helpful if you are trying to teach without a textbook or if you are just looking for additional ways of explaining tough statistical concepts to your students.

Here are a few things she shares that you could use:

1. Plenty of guidance for teaching via Excel/Google Sheets/Apple Numbers

I teach in JASP. I like it because it is free and there is a user interface.

However, I sometimes wonder if I should just teach using spreadsheets because ALL of our students will reencounter spreadsheets in the modern workplace. They may not ever see an ANOVA again.

Dr. Gernsbacher gives her students options for which product they will use. And she gives them guidance on how to do it.

2. Plenty of free readings about ALL of the intro topics.

All of the resources she has curated here are free. If you are trying to teach without a textbook, this is a possible resource. And if you are teaching with a textbook, these are still great readings. For just one example: The GLM chapter includes links to outside readings, like mathisfun.com and Harvard Business Review.

3. Her syllabus is a good example of how to reformat a syllabus for greater student engagement.

4. Class activities and assignments

These are interspersed throughout the entire class. She provides enough information for you to use in your classes.

Comments

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...

Using pulse rates to determine the scariest of scary movies

The Science of Scare project, conducted by MoneySuperMarket.com, recorded heart rates in participants watching fifty horror movies to determine the scariest of scary movies. Below is a screenshot of the original variables and data for 12 of the 50 movies provided by MoneySuperMarket.com: https://www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/features/science-of-scare/ https://www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/features/science-of-scare/ Here is my version of the data in Excel format . It includes the original data plus four additional columns (so you can run more analyses on the data): -Year of Release -Rotten Tomato rating -Does this movie have a sequel (yes or no)? -Is this movie a sequel (yes or no)? Here are some ways you could use this in class: 1. Correlation : Rotten Tomato rating does not correlate with the overall scare score ( r = 0.13, p = 0.36). 2. Within-subject research design : Baseline, average, and maximum heart rates are reported for each film. 3. ...

Rouse, Russel, & Campbell (2025) is a curated list of Psi Chi journals that are perfect for Intro Stats.

This summer, the Psi Chi Journal of Psychology Research published Rouse, Russel, and Campbell's Beyond the textbook: Psi Chi Journal articles in introductory psychology courses. It is a curated list of paywall-free Psi Chi articles, mostly with student co-authors, that are peer-reviewed and of an appropriate writing level and length to use in an Introduction to Psychology course. The authors provide the following information for each of the articles: In addition to being appropriate for Into Psych, these articles are also perfect for Intro Stats. In my classes, I emphasize the ability to read and write simple result sections. One way I would review this skill is by showing my students Results sections from published research and asking them to identify the test statistics, effect size, and other relevant information. This selection of articles features clear and concise results sections for t -tests, ANOVA, factorial ANOVA, regression, and correlation. I created a spreadsheet...

Search This Blog